I pushed the machine gun to the right, but couldn’t get a shot. My eyes lost focus; there were suddenly six Hinds in front of me.
“Dad! Shoot the rockets when Trace kills the throttle. The rockets!”
Dad?
Junior?
My head felt as if someone had sliced it into three parts, then put them back out of order. The rockets had to be armed before they could be fired, a simple two-step process, if you knew the sequence . . . if you knew where the panel was . . . if you knew how to turn the damn thing on.
The controls were to my right.
“Fire!”
Fire?
I jammed my hands on the panel, then felt something helping me, something from above.
Not the hand of God, but the hand of Junior, pushing the buttons.
“Fire, damn it!” I yelled, and the rockets shot out from the winglets in a surge of red, turning the sky in front of us into a huge red ball of flame.
Then the small part of the world that wasn’t twisting into darkness gave up and joined the rest, swarming me in a black hole of unconsciousness.
35 The S-70 is the civilian version of the Blackhawk.
14
[ I ]
I WOKE UP IN Tokyo General Hospital, feeling as if I were at the tail end of a three-day hangover. As a matter of fact, it had been three days since I’d been conscious. I’d lost a lot of blood in the helicopter. Rather than just going straight to Sapphire, the doctors refilled me with blood, which probably explained why I was out so long.
Karen was sitting in the chair next to me, a sight for sore eyes and battered bones. She looked over at me, smiled, and told me to relax and go back to sleep.
“What’s going on? Where’s Trace? What about Junior?” I asked, pushing myself up in the bed. “And Doc—where’s Doc?”
“Dick, you have to relax.”
“I am relaxed. What happened?”
“Trace is fine, and so is Doc, Shotgun, Mongoose, Sean—everyone is fine.” Karen sighed. “I’ll tell you the whole story if you just lay down in bed and relax.”
“Come into bed with me and help me relax.”
“Now I know you’re going to be okay.”
Bit by bit, Karen told me what happened. A pair of South Korean F-16s had arrived soon after Junior and I shot down the other Hind. After some expletive-laden exchanges over the radio, Trace managed to convince them we were on their side. They escorted us over the DMZ and into South Korea. Junior and Trace had a few cuts and bruises, but otherwise had come through the battle OK.
The Russian cargo ship had sunk from the battering administered by the North Koreans—that and some strategically placed explosives that were ignited by the SEALs when their inspection was complete. Their search didn’t turn up a nuke, nor did they find any members of Polorski’s Russian mob aboard. But it did turn up two computer laptops, as well as some leads on the gang’s financial connections. Other members of the gang are still at large. The last I heard, the hard drives on those computers had been studied by six different U.S. agencies, and shared with at least three foreign governments. With that many people in the mix, you can judge for yourself what the results are likely to be.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, the air farce—our air farce—dropped a pair of bunker buster bombs on Kim’s secret stash of nukes soon after I activated the homing signal. The warheads on the American bombs were specifically designed to be exploded underground against bunkers.36 The resulting explosion was powerful enough that it was recorded as an earthquake centering around a previously unknown fault just north of Pyongyang. Some scientists believed it was actually a nuclear test by Kim Jong Il’s government, a final experiment to make sure his technology was sound before surrendering his bombs.
Kim Jong Il has been notably silent on the matter. Nor would he comment on rumors that elements of the government and army had tried to overthrow him. The official North Korean news agency announced that he was looking forward to continued cooperation with the world community regarding nuclear weapons and the related treaties, and if you’ve been following the news lately, you’ll see that he has. More or less. Sometimes a lot less, but given that he no longer has any nukes hidden away, American authorities are no longer quite as concerned about how long the process takes.
I didn’t know that the bombs were going to be dropped. I said what I said to the others as a bluff. True, I’d expected something would happen. I knew Jones wouldn’t have gotten me involved if he wasn’t serious, and I realized the old-warhorse-dying-with-his-boots-on comments he’d dropped at our meeting weren’t idle musings. Personally, I would have wanted a bit more of an interlude between the time the locator was activated and the bombs were dropped. You might draw the conclusion that whoever ordered the attack was not very concerned about me making it out alive. You might even conclude that they didn’t want me to get out alive.
You might.
Of course, the timing might simply have been a result of standard bureaucratic screw ups . . . or the air farcers flying the planes may have wanted to knock off work early.
Both Yong Shin Jong and Sun have disappeared from public view. You can read into that what you want. One thing you can’t do is find any mention of them anymore in any official or unofficial North Korean document. In fact, all memory of them seems to have been erased; they’re not even mentioned in Wikipedia anymore.
As for yours truly, the doctors had a long list of arteries and veins that the shrapnel had supposedly nicked, cut, and contorted. Some nerves, muscles, and bones had been abused as well. The list reminded me that every square millimeter of the body has a fancy Latin name, which is how doctors justify their high prices when they patch you up.
“You know, Dick,” said Karen, who’d snuggled up to me as the tale progressed, “you’re getting too old for this. You can’t keep abusing your body and expecting to walk away with a smile.”
“So I limp away,” I said. “Where’s the harm in that?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Not really.”
I stifled her complaint with a kiss, but before we could get into a more thorough discussion, there was a knock on the door.
“Go away,” I said.
“Always joking,” said Jimmy Zim, coming in. “Commander Marcinko, Admiral Jones sends his regards.”
“Tell him to fuck himself.”
Jimmy Zim wasn’t sure how to take that, and I didn’t explain. He told me roughly the same story that Karen had, filling in a few of the blanks and apologizing for the C2 officers above him who had made things so difficult.
“You lived up to your reputation,” he said when he was done. “I hope we work together again.”
“Fuck you very much.”
Zim smiled—the first time I’d seen him smile since we met. “Fuck you, too.”
He left. I pulled Karen closer and asked her to explain a few things.
“Like?”
“Why are your lips so sweet?”
“I put honey on them.”
She pressed them against mine. There was a knock on the door.
“Go away,” I said.
“Um, okay.” It was Matthew Loring. “When should I, um, come back.”
“Never.”
“Uh, all right.”
“He’s only joking, Matthew,” said Karen. “You should know that by now.”
“Should I really go away?”
“Give us five minutes,” said Karen.
Five minutes? Let’s get to work, I thought, but she got up from the bed and went over to the chair where she’d put her pocketbook.
“It’s going to be hard to inspect your lips from this distance,” I told her.
“I have to show you something before Matthew comes in.”
“No kidding.”
“I’m not making a joke, Dick.”
Karen dug into her pocketbook and retrieved a small packet of papers. She had an odd look on her face as she handed it to me.
; I unfolded the papers. It was the security report on Matthew Loring.
Bright kid—he’d won a scholarship to MIT. Graduated in three years. Been a counselor in some sort of Outward Bound program. Won a rock-climbing competition in the Smoky Mountains. Star high school soccer player.
“Nice stuff,” I told Karen. “I’m going to offer him a permanent position. Not as a computer guy—Shunt’s got that handled. If we can get some more meat on his bones, I think he might make it as a shooter. He’s a little eccentric, but I think he’s got great potential.”
“He ought to,” said Karen. “Read the last page.”
I flipped over to it. It contained information about his early childhood. He’d been to a parochial school in northern New Jersey, just outside of New York. I’d gone to parochial school myself, though several miles away.
“Does he have a phobia about flying nuns attacking him in the dark?” I asked.
“Read the entire thing.”
Junior’s mother’s name was Marian Mahon. She was a single mother; father recorded as unknown on the birth certificate. His date of birth was 1986.
That was not a great year for me. My marriage had already gone to hell. My navy career died. And the government was in the process of inviting me to spend a little time in one of their no-charge hotels thanks to the hurt feelings of a few admirals I’d embarrassed during Red Cell exercises.
I couldn’t place a Maria Mahon, and couldn’t even remember being in a situation that would have led to Junior. But I couldn’t rule it out, either. She lived in the town where I had holed up for several months. She was dead now, having passed away two years before after an unsuccessful fight with breast cancer. But one of her surviving friends, interviewed during the security check, claimed that Matthew was the product of a one-night stand with a famous naval officer—yours truly.
The only “proof,” if you could call it that, was a collection of newspaper and magazine articles about me that dated to 1986. Maria had also bought every book I ever wrote.
“You think he’s my son?” I asked her.
“I think it’s a possibility. Don’t you?”
Physically, he didn’t look like me at all, not even when I was a kid. Personality-wise, he was quiet where I was loud, he was thoughtful where I charged ahead, certainly at that age. And yet—he did have definite Rogue Warrior tendencies.
“Does he know about this?” I asked.
“I haven’t asked.”
As I’ve gotten older over the years I’ve gotten pretty close to a lot of the shooters and other people who have worked for me at Red Cell International and in various other jobs. Sometimes I think of the younger ones almost as my kids: prodigal, for the most part, but I definitely felt affection toward them. But confronted with the possibility that Matthew might be my son, I didn’t know what to feel or do.
I was still trying to figure something out when he knocked on the door again.
“Come,” I said.
“How are you, boss?” he asked.
“Still in one piece.”
I pushed myself up in the bed to take a good long look at him. He’d been eating since I saw him last. Not that he’d really filled out; he couldn’t have gained more than three or four pounds. But he looked a lot less like a scarecrow, and more like a kid who’d just gone through a growth spurt and was about to fill out.
I’d been like that when I joined the navy.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“Fine. You were the only one hit when the flak got the chopper. There was a ton of blood all over the place. I thought you were a goner.”
“I’ve taken it in the neck plenty of times.”
Junior opened his mouth as if to say something. I waited. No words came out.
“Well, I just wanted to see if you were okay,” he said finally. “I mean, I figured you were but, you know, just to check it with my own eyes.”
He started back from the room.
“Hold on just a second,” I said.
Junior turned around quickly. He had a look in his eyes, something I hadn’t seen there before. It was fear.
Was he afraid of being my son?
“I want to offer you a permanent job,” I told him. “If you’re up for it. You’d have to go through real training. Trace would bust your butt.”
“She already is,” he said. He was suddenly beaming. “She’s got me running five miles a day, and that’s just before breakfast.”
Maybe at that point I should have said something, given him an opening in case he wanted to talk. But I didn’t. Partly, it was because I was still confused about my feelings, and unsure whether he really was my son or not. I wasn’t really ready to talk about it, even theoretically.
And partly it was because I didn’t think he was ready either. There was no sense spoiling the moment.
“Don’t let her run you down. Take two weeks off, then report to Rogue Manor,” I told him. “We’ll get you airfare.”
“Yes sir, thank you sir. Thanks, Dick—you won’t regret it.”
Junior practically ran from the room before I could say anything else.
“You’re not going to talk to him about it?” asked Karen.
“Eventually,” I told her, putting my arm around her and pulling her close to give her a kiss. “In the meantime, I have other family business to take care of.”
36 Were they nukes? Ask your congressman.
Turn the page for a preview of
ROGUE WARRIOR®
Seize the
Day
Richard Marcinko
and
Jim DeFelice
Available October 2009
from Tom Doherty Associates
A TOR HARDCOVER
ISBN 978-0-7653-1794-0
* * *
Copyright © 2009 by Richard Marcinko and Jim DeFelice
[ I ]
PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY it’s who you know that matters.
Let me tell you, children, it’s not who you know, it’s who you look like.
This is especially important when you’re on the roof of the tallest building on the Havana shoreline, hanging off the side by your fingernails while half the Cuban army points AK-47s at you.
But we should start at the beginning.
THE WHYS AND wherefores of my arrival in Cuba would fill a few hundred pages, and just as surely cure the worst insomnia known to mankind. So let’s cut through the bullshit and go to the executive version.
A recent vacation in sunny North Korea1 had left me so refreshed that I found myself locked away in a hospital ward, in traction and in a foul mood. Unable to spring me, my main squeeze Karen Fairchild nonetheless undertook to nurse me back to health, smuggling in copious amounts of Bombay Sapphire. Thanks to the care of Dr. Bombay, I rallied and managed to leave the hospital before the billing department figured out how to spell my last name.
Karen and I planned a nice Caribbean vacation in celebration. My friend Ken Jones at the CIA had other ideas.
Ken is a former admiral who defected to the Christians in Action, the government agency known to the incredulous as the Central Intelligence Agency. In my experience, it’s neither central nor intelligent, though I have to admit that I’ve never looked to the government to be accurate in anything, let alone naming its various parts.
Ken is the agency’s DCI, an abbreviation which I believe stands for Director of the Can’t-Cunt Inquisitors, though most people who haven’t dealt with him say it means director of the CIA.
Ken called me the day I got home from the hospital and asked how I was.
“Admiral, fuck you very much for calling,” I said in my pleasant voice. “Doctors say I’m contagious and can’t see anyone from the government for at least a decade.”
“You’re a card, Dick. Let’s have a drink.”
“Sorry, but I’ve got a lot of other things to do.”
“I was thinking the same thing when the invoice from Red Cell International hit my desk.”
It was just like the admiral to bring up money. Red Cell International is my corporate umbrella, the security company that conducts various rogue and not-so-rogue activities across the globe. The CIA owed Red Cell a considerable amount of dough-re-me, including the not insignificant expenses we’d incurred in North Korea. Cash flow being what it was, even a short delay in paying the bills would be a problem: my accountant has three kids in college, and their tuition bills were due.
“You’re not trying to blackmail me, are you Admiral?” I asked.
“Dick, I wouldn’t do that. But I do have a lot of work to do. A lot on my plate, so to speak. You could lighten that load with a little favor. A tiny one, actually.”
The smaller the favor, the bigger the problem. But Ken wouldn’t take no for an answer, and a few hours later I found myself sipping gin with him at his favorite little bar outside of Langley.
Ken stuck to lite beer, a sure sign of trouble.
It took two rounds before he got to the point, reaching into his jacket pocket for a pair of photos which he laid on the table. One was a recent picture of yours truly snapped somewhere in what we used to call the Mysterious Orient before we all got PC religion and switched to more acceptable terms like “the asshole pit of Asia.” Shot somewhere in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, the picture showed me with my beard more kempt than normal, though from the glint in my eye I knew I must have been enjoying myself, probably by planning what I would do to one of my government escorts when I didn’t have to be polite anymore.
The other photo showed me in a more relaxed moment: face flushed, eyes bugging out, teeth poised for blood. It would have made a lovely yearbook shot.
Except it wasn’t me. Ken reached into his jacket for another shot, showing me that it was actually an enlargement from a group photo. The group shot revealed that the florid face belonged to man who favored starched puke-green fatigues, a clothing choice that has never agreed with me.
“Recognize him?” asked Ken.
“We were separated at birth,” I said, handing the photos back. “After the doctor dropped him on his head.”
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