Oceans of Fire

by Don Pendleton

  Tokaido hung in his shackles in the dark and screamed like the damned in hell.

  Computer Room, Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  “FRISIAN ISLANDS, HELL.” Aaron Kurtzman shook his head

  in disgust as he examined the hacked German BND file. “Steffan and Karl Deyn died during a clandestine operation off the North Korean Peninsula.”

  The file kept getting worse and worse. The operation had been concluded under the command of United States Special Operations Command. West German intelligence had found out about a secret rocket engine technology transfer between East Germany and North Korea. The ball had already gone into play, but the Germans had known the identity and probable route of the courier. U.S. Intelligence assets in North Korea had discovered his entry point. It was the late 1980s and no one wanted North Korea’s SCUD missiles upgraded. However, West Germany and the U.S. were behind the timetable, and an amphibious intercept dangerously near the coast of North Korea was deemed the only option. The team had engaged in a high-altitude, low-opening jump. The submarine USS Los Angeles would make the pickup. Steffan and Karl Deyn had represented West Germany in the special operations team that had deployed that night into the Korean Bay.

  The operation had gone wrong. The seas had been rough, and whether through an intelligence leak or a bad combat drop, the insertion had been detected. The assault team had just reached the target when the North Korean gunboats arrived, spraying the surf with their heavy machine guns and hurling grenades into the water like depth charges to kill the team as its members dived for the retrieval sub. Two United States Navy SEALs and Ensign Steffan Deyn had died in the onslaught. The North Koreans had pulled Petty Officer Karl Deyn out of the water severely wounded. According to intelligence assets, Karl Deyn had died under interrogation by the North Korean Secret Police. Kurtzman sat back in his wheelchair with a sigh. Bolan had been right.

  Laurentius Deyn wanted revenge, and he had been waiting for his chance for twenty years. Deyn’s motive and weapon of choice were established. The question now was where and how he intended to wreak his revenge.

  “There should be a file on this operation on the U.S. end, so why don’t we have it?”

  “This one was run under U.S. auspices. We ran it, commanded it and screwed the pooch, hard. Everyone wanted this one covered up. West Germany and the U.S. both. I bet Deyn didn’t know the particulars of his sons’ deaths for years until an old navy buddy or someone in German intelligence leaked it to him.”

  “We need the U.S. file on the op and then we need to go back and cross-reference Clay Forbes’s service record with it. See if he knew anybody on that raid. I also want to know who was in command of the operation. That’s where we’re going to find our answers.”

  “I’ve already got it. Forbes was supposed to go on that mission but a knee injury sidelined him. He had done liaison training in Germany before the mission. From what little I can dig up it appears he was good friends with the Deyn brothers. Forbes is the one who flew to Germany to tell Deyn Karl and Steffan were dead. Forbes himself was an orphan and got into a lot of trouble before joining the Navy. I think Deyn and Forbes sort of adopted each other.”

  “I need the name of the man in command of that mission.”

  “We’re ripping open old wounds. No one is going to like this.”

  “Go straight to the President if you have to, but SOCOM has to give up that file, ASAP.” Kurtzman looked up at the file photos of the two dead young men. “We’re running out of time.”

  AKIRA TOKAIDO SAT in a shuddering, fetal ball in the corner of his cell. He was rocking and crying and he couldn’t stop. The hellish hallucinations had passed, but they had left him with the agonizing reality of his beaten, shackled body. Far worse than the state of his flesh was the state of his mind. He blinked and moaned.

  The Farm would have changed all access codes within an hour of his capture and gone on highest alert status. However, the intelligence agencies of every nation hostile to the U.S. would pay vast sums for the personnel and mission data Akira Tokaido had in his brain, and that Clay Forbes now owned. He had revealed everything.

  The young man cried out in fear as the door to his cell opened. He collapsed as Franka Marx quickly entered and closed the door behind her. She was carrying a duffel bag and she looked at him grimly. “Are you all right?”

  He was far from all right, but he no longer had the wherewithal for snappy comebacks. The woman knelt beside him, and Akira couldn’t prevent himself from recoiling and trying to crush himself farther into the corner.

  Marx chewed her lip at the state of the young man in front of her. “You must listen to me. We do not have much time. You were administered LSD-25 twelve hours ago. I have done research on the Web. You have had a ‘bad trip.’ The drugs will have worn off by now, but there can be devastating psychological aftereffects. You are undoubtedly suffering severe anxiety and mental depression.”

  Tokaido was one hairbreadth away from a psychotic episode and knew it.

  Marx reached into her duffelbag and he shrieked as she pulled out a syringe. Marx glanced desperately back at the door. “Listen! This is morphine! For pain! I stole it from medical! We do not have much time!”

  “You’re…going to help me?”

  “Yes.” Marx flicked the head of the syringe with her finger and spritzed out a small amount. “Give me your arm.”

  “I…can’t.” Tokaido shuddered and closed his eyes in fear at the needle. “I’m sorry, I can’t, I just—” He yelped as Marx stabbed the needle into his right buttock. He just couldn’t take any more. Any more of anything. He felt the screams rising up as he officially lost it. The scream suddenly died in his throat as a warm, fuzzy, loving blanket seemed to enfold every inch of his brutalized body and smother his pain. He relaxed back against the wall with a sigh. “Oh…man.”

  “No! I cannot have you fall asleep!” Marx shook two green capsules out of a brown prescription bottle. She pushed the pills into his mouth and cracked open a plastic bottle of water.

  Tokaido smiled and swallowed. His pain was gone. As if by magic. The nightmares had receded to a very distant corner of his mind and taken the crushing anxiety and terror with them. Whatever the woman wanted was fine with him. He mumbled around the water bottle. “What are those?”

  “Military amphetamines. I believe in the United States military they are called Green Hornets. They should take effect in a minute or two. I need you pain-free enough to walk and awake enough to function. As I said, we do not have much time.”

  “Better living through chemistry,” the young hacker agreed sleepily. “So, you got my e-mail?”

  “Yes. I was unable to verify your claims. However, I found far more than enough anomalous IESHEN Group activities to make me believe that you were right and that Herr Deyn plans to do something terrible.”

  Tokaido was suddenly desperately thirsty and he chugged the bottle of water almost without swallowing. “You’ve come to rescue me?”

  “I cannot rescue you.” Marx looked at Akira very steadily. “I believe that the best I can do is get out a message. I will need your help, and I do not believe either of us will survive the attempt. I think you and I will both be dead very shortly.”

  “Okay.” For some reason this didn’t seem to bother him very much. “But tell me why.”

  Marx pulled a blue warm-up suit that looked a size too large out of the bag, and Akira’s running shoes. She also pulled out his switchblade and a compact pistol he didn’t recognize. “I found your guns, but they were empty, so I stole this one.” She smiled sheepishly. “I have spent the last four hours stealing things.”

  “I can see that.” Tokaido pulled on the sweat suit and runners. The slide of the pistol said Mauser M2. It was bigger than the PPK that Kissinger had given him, but most of the controls were all in the same place. He checked the pistol as he had been taught and found the magazine was full and there was a round in the chamber. He pocketed the pistol and the knife. “You still haven
’t told me why.”

  “I have done many illegal things for Herr Deyn, and willingly, but I will not be a party to mass murder.”

  Tokaido took a deep breath. Saving the world was still on the table. He felt better. He was also starting to feel very wide awake. His fatigue was falling away, and everything around him was coming into sharp focus again. His thoughts felt jangled and jumpy, but he found he could think fairly clearly. He wasn’t afraid anymore. The young hacker surprised himself by smiling. Opiates and amphetamines made for a very heady cocktail. Just what every torture victim reeling from LSD withdrawal needed.

  Marx nodded. “You are better?”

  “Yeah, I feel better. Thanks.”

  “Listen to me. You have been exposed to very powerful drugs in a very short period of time. You may feel better now, but soon you will crash, and not just physically but I fear mentally and emotionally. When you come down it will not be pleasant.”

  Tokaido pushed himself to his feet. He fell against the wall as a massive head rush washed colors across his vision. He took deep breaths and steadied himself. “If this is a suicide mission, then I don’t want to come down. Just keep me going until we’ve done what we have to do.”

  Marx handed him the bottle and a second syringe. “This should get you through.”

  He suddenly straightened as his mind began kicking into gear. “Why do you need my help to get out a message?”

  “We have gone dark. No outgoing messages can be sent via computer without protocols that only Herr Deyn, Forbes and Mahke have access to. All personal communication devices have been confiscated except for key personnel, myself included. Local radio transmissions are being jammed across all frequencies.”

  “Well, how about an escape attempt? We can send out a message once we’re clear.”

  “Can you pilot a helicopter, Herr Tokaido?”

  “Uh…no.”

  “Neither can I, and we are in the middle of the ocean.”

  Tokaido’s stomach sank. “Okay, so how do you want to play it?”

  “As I see it, we have only one option. I must disable the communications security protocols and get out a message. I have to do this from the control room, and I doubt I can do it without being discovered, given the current security situation.”

  The young man took a very long breath and let it out. He felt the weight of the pistol and the knife in his pockets. “You’re saying you’ll need a diversion.”

  “Yes,” Marx agreed. “I will need a diversion.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Damn it.” Akira Tokaido sighed as he peered out the porthole and stared across the blue ocean and couldn’t see any land. He was on an offshore platform. “What ocean are we on?”

  “I don’t know.” Marx frowned. “Our exact location is on a need-to-know basis. We flew for twelve hours out of Germany. I do not know which direction. We landed on a private airstrip in the night and then took a helicopter for several hours to come here.”

  Tokaido stared vainly at the chopper on the pad. Grimaldi had offered to teach him how to fly, as he had the other Stony Man personnel, but he’d always been too busy with his computers to take the pilot up on the offer. He regretted it bitterly now. “What about a boat? Can’t we steal a boat?”

  “And go where? Which direction? We would be swiftly overtaken, and the radio frequencies are being jammed.” Marx gripped his arm tightly. “We must send out a message from the control room.”

  “You’re right.” He gazed out across the ocean again. “We stick to the plan.”

  “Good.” Marx peered at him hopefully. “So what is the plan?”

  Tokaido had been thinking about that, and no option was looking good. The woman had broken into the security suite and fed a ten-minute video loop of him lying on the floor, shaking. He doubted anyone was monitoring the feed, and it would fool a cursory look. Marx had taken a crash course on controlled substances. LSD trips, she’d informed him generally lasted nine to twelve hours depending on the dosage. Forbes had been timing the drug’s onset, so he was also probably timing when they’d be wearing off. They had to hope Forbes was waiting the full twelve hours so that Tokaido would be lucid for the second part of the interrogation. It was a huge if, but if so, according to Marx’s timetable they had about twenty minutes before the witching hour and Forbes came for his pound of Akira’s flesh.

  Tokaido pulled the pistol out of his pocket. “I could shoot Forbes.”

  A smile ghosted across Marx’s face. “That is the amphetamines talking.”

  She was right. Despite the beatings and the psychological torture, at the moment he felt pretty unstoppable. However, he was lucid enough to know that only morphine was keeping crippling pain at bay. The amphetamines were giving him borrowed strength, as well as chemically induced courage and clarity. “Yeah, but it’s still not a bad plan. I could go back to my cell, strip down, curl myself in the corner around the gun, and then shoot Forbes and anyone with him when they walk in. He’ll never expect it.”

  “Yes, but can you beat him? Forbes and the medic? And any assistants he has with him? And the two security men who will be stationed outside during interrogation?”

  “Yes! I mean no!” Tokaido’s fists clenched in sudden anger. “I don’t know!” He glanced around the access corridor they were hiding in helplessly. “Jesus, Franka! I’m a tech guy! Not a field operative! What do you want me to do? Huh? Tell me and I’ll goddamn do it! Okay? But just don’t…”

  Tokaido’s voice trailed off. Marx was crying. She was tech, as well. She had never bargained on betraying everyone and everything she had ever cared about, much less face torture and death at their hands, and she didn’t have luxury of Green Hornets and morphine to take the edge off certain annihilation. “Listen, Franka, I’m sorry, we’re both in over our heads. I—”

  Marx fell weeping into his arms. The young computer genius stood with a beautiful German redhead in one hand and German steel filling the other. He was on an oil platform with a hot babe facing impossible odds and a nuclear countdown. His ultimate fantasy of being out on field ops made real. Despite the amphetamines, he suddenly felt like throwing up. Instead he steeled himself for what was to come. “Franka, what do you want me to do?”

  She looked up and smiled tremulously. “I’d like you to make love to me, but I don’t think we have time.”

  He looked at the woman he held in his arms. “Damn it.”

  “I know. So what I need you to do instead is to clear the control room, at least as much as possible.”

  “I attack.” Tokaido nodded. “And make them chase me.”

  “Yes, and in the confusion, I will try to send a message to the outside.”

  “All right, how much time do you need to get there?”

  The woman wiped her eyes and squared her shoulders. “Give me five minutes, and then do whatever you can think of.”

  Command Shack

  “HERR DEYN.”

  Laurentius Deyn turned from looking out to sea. Johan Mahke was gazing intently at the security suite. One monitor in particular seemed to hold his attention. Clay Forbes leaned over the giant German’s shoulder. “What have you got, Johan?”

  Franka Marx walked into the control room with her laptop under her arm. “What is happening?”

  Everyone gather around the monitor. It was the video feed from the holding cell. Akira Tokaido lay naked, shivering and sniveling incoherently in the corner. Deyn frowned. “You have really done a number on him, Clay. I hope you did not ruin him.”

  “Nah, that’s still the LSD messing with him. His body should finish metabolizing the drug…” Forbes checked his watch “—about ten minutes ago, and that’s on the outside envelope. I got distracted with some operational details.”

  “That is not the problem.” Mahke’s voice rumbled low in his chest. “We have an anomaly.”

  Deyn’s face became a steely mask. “What kind of anomaly?”

  Mahke held up a thick finger, his eyes still inten
t on the screen. “Wait…wait…there!” A black line twitched through the screen for an eyeblink and then the feed resumed. “I have seen it twice now.”

  Marx’s stomach dropped. The jig was up, all she could do was try to play it for a few more seconds. She stabbed her finger at the screen. “Someone has looped the security feed! That is a recording!”

  Deyn drew his pistol. “Forbes! Take four men and get to the holding cell now! Mahke, you are with me! I want the boats, submersibles and the helicopter secured immediately!”

  Gunshots rang out and three rapid smacking sounds rattled the windows of the control shack. Forbes shoved Marx to the floor. The heavy steel storm shutters were open but the bulletproof glass had resisted the attack. Three bullets had cratered and cracked the observation window. Outside, a thin figure in a blue tracksuit was running away across the central platform with a pistol in his hand and his ponytail flying.

  Forbes drew his magnum. “Why, that little piece of—”

  Mahke punched the alarm button and Klaxons began to roar. The German hit the intercom and his voice roared over every inch of the rig. “Intruder alert! I repeat, intruder alert. Armed and dangerous! Asian, in blue IESHEN Group tracksuit!”

  Mahke turned to Deyn. “You want him alive?”

  Deyn’s eyes glinted with steely anger. “Oh, indeed, I want him alive. I want to know how he got out, how he managed to compromise security, and most of all, who helped him. Franka, run a diagnostic on the security suite and find out how it was compromised.” Deyn turned to one of his techs. “Jurgen, scan all communication frequencies. I want to know if Mr. Tokaido is somehow in contact with someone. Everyone else, you have your orders.” Deyn snapped open his phone and began speaking in Russian as he and the armed men left the control shack.