by Pamela Clare
To be left behind would mean her death and, eventually, her sister’s death. And then the loss of many more innocent lives.
She whipped their little truck around a child’s bicycle, throwing her body to the side and bumping his.
Heat flushed her skin at the contact. She shook off the silly reaction and said, “Well? What are you handing to me?”
“You might not know the city better than I do, but you do know the people and where to go without drawing attention. I wouldn’t have risked coming through narrow areas like this, places that are prime for an ambush.”
Was that a compliment? It couldn’t be, could it? Not from a man. She decided saying nothing would be the wisest answer.
When she emerged in the park, she slowed her speed and drove down a narrow sidewalk.
He asked, “How far?”
“Close. Maybe one block.”
He spoke as if talking to himself, but he was communicating with his men. “We’re comin’ in rollin’. Hold your fire.”
After a brief silence as he listened to someone, he replied, “Got some help from a friendly.”
Jin cut her eyes at him, but said nothing while she drove the last stretch to where she parked the tuk-tuk next to the painted wood carving of a lion. It sat at the corner of an abandoned warehouse with boarded windows and junk cluttered outside.
Her passenger climbed out, his sharp eyes searching the grounds until he spied the area and waved his hand in that direction.
In the next moment, Har and Pang emerged with three men protecting them. Those three looked like this cowboy, smoky ghosts armed for war.
One was taller than the other two, but that was all she could make out about the men on his team since they all wore the similar muted clothes of the locals over their own gear. They all had night-vision monoculars and were armed from head to toe.
Jin stepped out of the tuk-tuk on the side facing the building and flipped on a penlight to find her way through the junk to the rotting door panel twenty feet away.
When she reached it, she called quietly, “Over here.”
Her cowboy nodded that he heard her, so she pushed the panel aside and squeezed through the opening. Stale odors left from years of storing dried fish and fishing equipment assaulted her nose. Docks for the Taedong River were less than a kilometer away.
When someone pulled the panel aside to enter, Jin snapped off the penlight. She’d learned to appreciate the safety darkness offered.
Once the cowboy and his team were inside with Pang and Har, one of his team asked, “What’s the plan, Bo?”
Bo? That was probably not a real name. They would not use real names here.
Fair enough. She would limit what she told them as well.
Bo said, “I’ve got one, but it has more holes than a sieve. She’s going to show us the way out of the city.”
Pang and Har stood ten feet away, but with no light on in here they couldn’t see her, because she couldn’t see them.
Pang piped up. “She? What she?”
She might as well answer Pang as there was no hiding from him at this point. “Jin.”
“Says she’s part of the network that’s helping you two escape,” Bo explained. “Works in your lab.”
Pang would ruin her chance to leave by telling these men she was of no value to the Americans.
That would have been bad enough, but Pang said, “You would trust a woman who sleeps with our soldiers?”
With one question, that lying dog Pang had undermined all the work she’d done to gain the cowboy’s trust in a short time and made her sound like a whore.
Chapter Five
Tanner clenched his fists at Pang insinuating Jin was a slut. Why am I so angry on her behalf?
Maybe she had slept with half of the DPRK army.
But Tanner took one look at her stricken face and questioned the validity of Pang’s statement. This woman had laid into a soldier who could have killed her, especially if he’d gotten a shot off with that weapon pointed at Tanner’s head.
She’d have died next.
Nick, Dingo and Blade waited on Tanner’s word.
There wasn’t time to waste speculating about Jin’s sex life. Tanner had made the decision to go with her option for escaping the city. He was sticking with it. Indecision was the quickest way to die on a mission like this one.
He pointed at Jin then realized she couldn’t see anything in the dark. “Turn on your penlight, Jin, and keep it away from our faces. Get busy showing us the way out of here.”
Pang made a disgusted noise in his throat, but Tanner ignored it. For now.
Har started wheezing. Blade produced an inhaler and handed it to Har.
Turning to Nick and Dingo, Tanner said, “Cover us outside.”
They left without creaking the panel that pretended to be a door.
Jin turned on her tiny flashlight and stuck it between her lips. Then she started dragging rotten boards and debris off to the side.
Pang’s clothes had wet spots at heavy perspiration points. He had about forty pounds more than he needed for someone five-foot-nine. That one wouldn’t make a serious hike.
Pang asked, “What are you doing, Jin?”
She spoke around the flashlight. “Show you the way out.”
That must not have been what Pang was looking for. His tone sharpened. “Why are you here?”
Standing up, she pulled the flashlight out of her mouth and answered, “Because Myong has betrayed you and the soldiers know you are both defecting.”
Pang snarled, “How can that be? Who did this?”
Jin dropped the handful of garbage off to the side and turned to Tanner. “I cannot show you the way if I have to spend all night answering questions.”
Tanner ordered, “No more questions, Pang.”
“What? You cannot—”
“I can and will do whatever I deem necessary to get you, Har and my men out of here alive. You and Har keep quiet unless one of us asks you a question.”
She stared at Tanner, clearly catching that he had not included her in the people on his exit list.
Instead of commenting on it, she grabbed the edge of a barrel that had to weigh more than she did and started to drag it out of the way.
Tanner pushed her aside. “Give me some room.”
The minute he had it moved, Tanner stepped back. “Now what?”
Jin kicked dirt out of the way with the toe of her boot in a couple spots until she struck something solid. She dropped to her knees to clean off the surface of a hatch. Looking up, she said, “There are steps to a tunnel. It is connected to more tunnels that will lead us out of the city.”
Or get his men trapped underground.
This just got better by the minute, but sirens were screeching outside, growing louder. Coming closer.
Nick and Dingo rushed in.
Tanner said, “She’s got a tunnel exit, but we may get boxed in somewhere.”
Dingo said, “If we do, we fight, mate. There’s nowhere outside to go right now and the lights in the stadium are dying down.”
Celebration was over.
More soldiers would be available to flood the streets. Having the largest army in the world meant no lack of manpower when needed.
Tanner dropped to his knees and wrenched hard until the hatch finally came free. He raised it and swung the dusty slab of wood all the way back to lie on the ground. Standing up, he told Jin, “Lead.”
She stepped down into a black hole that swallowed her in seconds. He couldn’t even hear her footsteps. If not for the small light bobbing its way downward, he’d have thought the ground had sucked her in whole.
The physicists exchanged wary looks. Those two had probably never been so close to dirt in their lives and they came from a country where women had little value.
Pang clearly had an issue with Jin.
Were they rethinking their decision to defect? Too late for that.
Dingo descended next, then Tanner waved the two packages forwa
rd with Blade right behind them.
Nick was last to step into the opening and paused next to Tanner. “You trust her?”
“Not a bit.”
Nick grinned and dropped down the steps.
Tanner shook his head. He never knew how to take Nick.
Once down in the hole, Tanner pulled the hatch closed. That wouldn’t slow anyone down once they found the tuk-tuk and came inside to investigate. But his booby traps would.
Tanner pulled a Claymore mine out of his kit bag and set it in the dark under the steps, pointing up. Next he rigged a pressure switch three steps from the bottom. That should take out the steps, and cause their pursuers the most trouble with one punch. The whole thing took him 90 seconds to set up.
Thirty feet in, he rigged another Claymore with a trip wire across the tunnel, then hurried to catch up to his group who waited fifty feet away. That would be enough to slow them down without caving rock walls in on top of his team. He hoped.
The tunnel smelled old and the timbers supporting the ceiling had rotten areas, but it was wide enough to walk two side-by-side. He maneuvered to the front and put his hand on Jin’s back to get her started forward.
Her muscles tightened under his fingers.
Not the reaction of a woman used to any man’s touch.
Tanner dropped his hand. She took off and he stayed at her side.
If this tunnel went as far as the DMZ, which Tanner seriously doubted because those routes would be heavily guarded, his men could make the hundred-mile trek, but pudgy Pang and wheezing Har would never manage it.
There was only one given at this point.
They would run into security somewhere and his team wouldn’t have the advantage if they were fighting in a tunnel.
Chapter Six
That crazy cowboy was not going to take her with him.
Jin fanned her pitiful flashlight over the dirt floor of the tunnel and fought to draw each breath against the thick lump of disappointment lodged in her chest. She’d waited three long years for this opportunity. Not just waited, but suffered every indignity her superiors had dumped on her just so she could remain close to Pang and Har.
The golden boys of Project Jigu-X.
Part of the inner circle of power forbidden to a woman.
She didn’t want their power, but it would have been nice to have the same privileges when she was just as capable as those two.
But she was less than just a woman. She was Amerasian in a land where others spit upon anyone who had blood mixed with an American’s.
She hurried along the uneven floor of the tunnel, careful not to stumble. A twisted ankle would mean death if she couldn’t run.
She should have negotiated a deal with this Bo before he caught up with his team.
If these men were not American military, who were they?
They moved and acted like a highly-skilled military team and definitely sounded American. Especially the cowboy. He was as large as a tank and clearly in charge.
Who had the United States sent to take the physicists out of here? Had this team already revealed their identity to Pang and Har?
Of course they would have.
But not to her.
She was not part of their mission.
It didn’t matter. Everyone in this tunnel depended on her right now and they were fortunate that she had no choice but to escape or face interrogation, then death.
Or worse.
For a woman, there were worse punishments than death.
Her fingers tightened on the flashlight. Pang and Har would be a problem. Pang more than Har. He hated her and, even if by some miracle she convinced the cowboy to take her with them, Pang would find a way to leave her behind.
He’d warned her that he’d make her pay for refusing his advances. Her skin crawled at the idea of being touched by Pang. He was no different than his superior who had raped a young girl. Jin was glad the soldiers had found evidence she’d planted to implicate him as a traitor.
They’d just found it too quickly and almost caught her at the lab.
The tunnel narrowed to single file, which meant she was approaching the spot for a change of direction.
The cowboy stepped in behind her, allowing her to remain in the lead. He asked, “How far does this go?”
“Not far. This will end at a sheet of metal mounted over an opening in a wall. There is a room on the other side. Once we pass through there, we find another tunnel.”
“Stop before you reach the metal cover to that room and let me take the lead.”
“Why?”
“In case someone’s in the room.”
He thought to stand between her and a threat? She said, “The room is empty.”
“I still go first.”
The idea that a man would protect her stirred a funny fluttering in her chest. An American, no less. No one had ever stepped up to defend her, but this man had held her in his arms at the Ryugyong Hotel and turned his body to shield her from the guards, even when he knew nothing of her.
She had felt safe with him.
Safe had never been a word in her vocabulary. Not when it came to men.
Lack of sound sleep for months must be playing with her mind. She was no silly woman to read so much into a stranger’s action.
When her light glanced off the smooth metal covering, a hole large enough for even Pang to pass through, Jin stopped. “We are almost there.”
Bo touched her shoulder with a finger. “Change positions with me.”
She had no choice but to flatten her back against the wall to allow him to pass through the narrow space. The cowboy turned to face her and sidestepped past, but there was still not enough room for both of them without contact.
She sucked in her breath.
He did the same and barely touched her, but the friction of his chest across the tips of her breasts sent heat shooting into her stomach. Energy raced across her skin and her pulse drummed a fast beat.
Then he was gone, striding ahead.
She needed a moment to gather her wits, then quickly fell into step behind him before anyone else tried to pass her that way. Her heart thumped faster than when she and the cowboy had faced the soldier in the Ryugyong Hotel.
When she reached the end of the path, the cowboy asked, “What’s on the other side of this wall?”
“It was once a room for storing equipment when they were digging at this level, but it is no longer used after a tunnel leading to it collapsed before they could finish it.”
“Collapsed?”
“Not this tunnel,” she clarified. “That metal panel has been here a long time. The bolts holding it to the wall are old, but it will require two of you to push it open. There is a tall shelf on the other side to camouflage the panel. It must be pushed forward.” She was telling secrets given to her during the past three years, but those secrets had been shared for the explicit purpose of aiding her escape at some point.
“How can I be sure there isn’t someone on the other side?”
There shouldn’t be since this area had not been used in many years, but she’d stopped depending on the way things should be from the minute she and her sister were sold as children.
Jin aimed her penlight at a narrow vertical opening between the panel and an eroded section of the wall on the left. “Look for yourself and decide.”
He stuck his face up to the slot for a moment then stood away from the wall. “What does that room open into?”
“Another tunnel. This area has not been active in many years according to my … sources.” It grated to share so much in front of Pang, but as long as he did not know who her sources were, those friends were safe.
The cowboy ordered, “Stand back.”
Only an arrogant man would not listen to her when she was the one with the information. But she understood inflated male egos. Had suffered years of them.
Stepping back, she crossed her arms and waited. The panel was one-and-a-half meters tall by one meter wide a
nd bolted into the concrete wall.
He rammed his shoulder and the steel gave a little bit. That had to hurt.
One of his men asked, “You want to blow it, Bo?”
He shook his head. “No, let’s save the explosives until we have to use them.”
Two more shoves and he jarred the panel.
Jin grudgingly admitted he was stronger than she’d thought and that was saying something for someone she considered the size of a mountain.
He peeked into the opening then stepped back, lifted his boot and rammed it into the bottom of the panel that was knee-high off the ground. The right corner shot forward then he kicked the left corner. By the time he finished attacking the panel, it hung from the only bolt still in place at the top right corner.
But that allowed enough room to force his big body through so he could shove the shelf out of the way.
Once inside, he called back, “Clear.”
She took that as the signal to move and stepped through the opening he made by holding the metal back. He took her arm as she entered the storage room, guiding her to the side as if he thought she’d fall on the debris piled on the floor. She sneezed at the dust and suffered a deep breath of mildew.
The room wasn’t spacious to begin with and six men filled it quickly even if two were Pang and Har.
She reached for the door and got yanked back.
“Hold it, Jin.”
Swinging around, she stabbed his chest with a sharp forefinger. “Do not grab me again, cowboy.”
One of his men stifled a chuckle.
“No one moves until I say so.” In the tiny bit of light from her penlight, she could see Bo stare at her with that single night vision eyepiece. His uncovered eye gave her a fierce glare. Then he put his hand on the finger she poked against his chest and moved it away, but without harming her. That one eye held her gaze the whole time, warning her she was stepping dangerously close to an invisible line that marked the limit of his patience.
She kept her voice calm in spite of her own limited patience. “I know what is on the other side of that door. I know where we have to go to find a stairway. I know what to avoid. You should do as I say.”
“That’s not going to happen.” He set her aside and took the lead at the door, opening it to look out. He called quietly over his shoulder, “Which direction are the steps and where do they lead?”
