by Dalton Fury
He crossed the sixty feet of slightly sloped terrain at a crouch, careful with each step, carefully zigging and zagging between the five-foot-high happy mounds, before taking a knee next to his medic. Doc was already bent over one of the two supine men digging in his aid bag.
“Midz?” Kleinsmith asked, assuming the North Koreans had been drugged with midazolam.
“Yeah, time for another, too.”
“What the fuck happened?” Kleinsmith asked as he watched Doc delicately hold a twenty-three-gauge medical needle and squirt a single drop of clear liquid from the business end.
“Sons of bitches spooked us near the bridge,” Danno said, taking a knee next to Kleinsmith, “walked the fuck up on us like they owned the damn place until Roscoe hit on their scent.”
“Damn, these guys are Red Guards,” Kleinsmith said. “Roscoe get a bite?” Kleinsmith noticed the copper-colored Belgian Malinois sprawled on his belly, tongue threatening to snake out of the Hannibal Lecter–looking muzzle, breathing heavily a few yards away. His unblinking dark glassy eyes were steady state on the two Red Guards, waiting for a command, any command, to make his master happy and receive a treat.
“Nope, Streaker busted both of them with the less-than-lethal,” Danno said, “both center mass to the chest.”
“They armed?” Kleinsmith asked as he studied both bodies, looking for a rise in the chests, as if he didn’t really know if they were dead or alive.
“Negative,” Danno said.
Kleinsmith watched as Doc unbuckled the oversize and cheap brown utility belt that wrapped the Korean’s narrow waist. Letting it flop to the dirt, Doc pulled the brown uniform shirt collar down on the middle-aged Korean to expose half of a large, swollen black-and-blue bruise, the definite point of impact of the rubber bullet. Doc released the collar and placed his gloved left hand gently but firmly on the man’s forehead. He pushed down, naturally opening the mouth, to allow him to insert the needle between the inside of the cheek and the teeth and gums.
“Second dose to the buccal pouch?” Kleinsmith asked, pointing toward the inside of the Korean’s cheek.
“Third,” Danno answered.
“These guys are light sleepers,” Doc said. “I’m about out though; maybe enough for one more dose.”
Kleinsmith looked hard at the sedated paramilitary, then watched Doc slide on his knees, dragging his aid bag with him to the other numb Red Guard a few feet away. They could have been twins. Both wore identical brown, collared shirts made of Vinalon, the standard uniform of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards that make up the nation’s civilian defense force. Top two buttons unsecured, possibly buttons missing. Sleeves rolled up to just under the elbows. Pants, the same swamp-brown color, at least a size or two too big, but blending in with the hillside better than their ghillies. Both in hand-me-down worn leather sandals over calloused feet that provided no hope to make a run for it should they wake up, as black flex ties secured their feet and ankles tight together. Kleinsmith knew their hands, hidden behind their backs, were flex-tied as well.
Hard, proud men full of midazolam, a powerful drug that peasants like these couldn’t come by even if they were about to have a leg amputated inside Pyongyang’s finest hospital. The drug works wonders, though, for presurgery jitters, and folks with money in North Korea or kin to the royal Kim clan could possibly confirm it inhibits unpleasant memories as well. In situations where killing the unwelcome busybody was against the combat rules of engagement, the drug was invaluable. But like any perfect drug, one had to respect the dose limits. Too much too often, and a man could end up checking out from a lethal injection. Of course, on any other field, they would be two dead men.
“Let’s muzzle ’em too, Doc,” Kleinsmith said. “Shouldn’t be too long now before showtime, but who knows?”
“Will do, Dealer.”
Kleinsmith stood to a crouch to move back to his side of the perimeter. He stopped, turned back around, still trying to process the yet unseen dangers this type of contingency presented.
“Ammo,” Kleinsmith said. “How much?”
“Zilch on this guy.” Doc kneeled next to one of them before turning to look at the other. “This cat only had seven rounds of AK ammo and one sharp-ass belly sticker.”
“Damn, these guys must be in line to pick up their dead buddy’s rifle.”
“No way to win a war,” Doc said.
“Rog,” Kleinsmith said before turning away.
If nothing else, the intel on these guys was spot-on.
Kleinsmith slipped back in full crouch to his side of the perimeter. His shaded shadow looked like Sasquatch with a slung rifle given the super-stuffed shape of the ghillie. He looked at his Seiko dive watch, a few minutes before 0200 Zulu, and knew it wouldn’t be long now before they heard the distinct clanking sound of the armored train making its return trip to Pyongyang. He’d never liked the idea of having to place the explosives during the daylight. That was just plain stupid from a tactical perspective, but his original plans to insert a day earlier, giving them two cycles of darkness to reach the barn, lay up for a day, then place the charges the following night, had been discarded the moment the radio teletypewriter at Pine Gap started buzzing with Seamstress’s last punch tape message.
That was old news. This was the here and now. Their cover and concealment sucked and their night-vision goggles were now worthless, but all things considered, his men were postured for the hit. They had confirmed the armored train passing by at 140 yards’ distance. As expected, a single rust-colored engine pulled the lead train, which Kleinsmith knew to be the advance party, with three Christmas-green through cars tricked out with a horizontal bright yellow racing stripe on both sides of each. Straight out of the target folder, almost two minutes behind, was the delegation’s VIP train, sporting an additional through car but with an identical single engine doing the pulling. Finally, maybe five minutes behind the second train, a third set of cars identical to the lead. All three caboosed by a second rust-colored engine that would pull them back to Pyongyang after the meeting.
Kleinsmith was proud of their work so far. OPSKEDS transmitted on schedule, C4 planted, and the two wrong-place, wrong-time Red Guards sedated for the time being.
As Kleinsmith took a knee next to his communicator to make a SAT shot to Inchon and pass the next OPSKED to Gangster he worried that any delay in the train could potentially screw their stay time. Kleinsmith worried as he turned back toward their two sleeping guests down the hill before lifting the hand mike.
Someone has to be missing these two jokers by now.
Camp Greaves, South Korea
Knowing Hawk was only a klick north of the Notri, Kolt had only managed a fitful sleep, even with an Ambien. As he and Noble Squadron roused, the checking and rechecking of gear commenced. Neatly arrayed on the floor against the walls of the dining room and dance floor, their combat kit was ready for efficient and rapid donning, no different than a New York City Jake’s turnout gear waiting on a five-alarm fire.
Kolt and Slapshot glassed two white passenger vans from the riverside balcony as the vehicles maneuvered slowly around the yellow-and-black road barriers that control vehicle speed on the bridge. With bellies full from some room-temperature army-issue Meals Ready-to-Eat vegetable lasagna and beef stew, they had confirmed everything was on schedule without a single cell call or radio transmission made.
Now they waited for a phone call from Gangster and the J-staff. Kolt needed one call, the phone call confirming that Hawk had passed OPSKED “Toyota” from Panmunjom, the one on the execution checklist that signified Seamstress had been tagged with the RRD.
“It’s Gangster for you,” Slapshot said as he passed the Galaxy 4 to Kolt. “By the way, SEALs have the explosives in place. Both bridges set to blow.”
Kolt nodded, happy to take it, then paused a moment to watch Slapshot give a vulgar sign with his hand and mouth before he put it to his right ear.
“Go for Racer,” Kolt said, forgetting he was on
a cell and not a tactical radio.
“Your friend at Panmunjom called,” Gangster said. “They changed the meeting location on her, she is inside North Korea now.”
“What?” Kolt said, spinning around to move farther away from his men, who were already kitted up and standing by. “Is her cover blown?”
“No,” Gangster said, “she seems to be okay.”
“Okay? She is inside North Korea by herself. That’s not okay, that’s life-threatening.”
“She has PIDed Seamstress,” Gangster said.
“Has she tagged him?” Kolt said. “We didn’t get that OPSKED.”
“No Toyota call yet, she is still working on it,” Gangster said.
“Shit, Gangster, Hawk is hanging it out here,” Kolt said. “I recommend we build the Little Birds up early just in case.”
“Negative,” Gangster said. “You could compromise the entire operation.”
“Dude, just build them up, save ten minutes,” Kolt said, “not fly them to Pyongyang.”
“No, stay with the operational timeline on the sync matrix. There is nothing driving our contingencies yet.”
“Then at least let me put our UAV up over Hawk.”
“What fucking UAV?” Gangster demanded.
“We deployed with the SpyLite,” Kolt said, now reminded that they hadn’t shared that information yet, “standard loadout gear.”
“Standard?” Gangster said. “Bullshit, Racer!”
“We’ll keep it at max range for standoff, it’s too small and quiet to see and no civilians live in the DMZ anyway,” Kolt said, trying to put a happy face on Gangster’s surprise.
“Damn it! I’m giving you an order, Major Raynor,” Gangster said. “Do not put the SpyLite up.”
“Roger,” Kolt said, deciding his men didn’t need to hear any more. “It’s risky.”
“You’re damn right it is,” Gangster said. “If that thing is spotted it could blow the entire mission. Or, if it burns in, especially over the border, we’ll have an international incident on our hands that POTUS can’t deny.”
“Thanks for the update,” Kolt said, trying to smooth out the catfight. “Ring us if anything changes.”
Kolt waited for Gangster to kill the call from his end, surprised he didn’t try to get in the last word, then slipped the cell into his right front thigh pocket on his Crye combat pants.
Kolt walked back toward his men lounging in the dining room of the Notri. They were fully kitted out, just waiting for the order to move to the KOREX trailers and build-up the helos.
“Slap!” Kolt said, looking around for his mate, “let’s put the SkyLite up.”
Slapshot approached Kolt, moving close enough to question the order without the others overhearing. “You sure about that, boss?”
“Yeah, I think we owe it to Hawk,” Kolt said, looking past Slapshot and toward the other operators. “What do you think?”
“Did Gangster green-light us?”
“No, he didn’t,” Kolt said, almost afraid to look Slapshot in the eye, “in fact, he gave me a direct order not to launch it.”
“In that case I think they’ll be giving this squadron back to Gangster if you blow him off.”
“I’m willing to take the chance,” Kolt said.
“Fuck, Kolt, an order is a fucking order, man,” Slapshot said, getting up in Kolt’s face. “Don’t jeopardize your career, this squadron, this mission by rocking the boat when it’s not necessary.”
“It is necessary.”
“No, Kolt, it’s not.”
“Hawk needs it,” Kolt said, amazed that Slap was pushing back this hard.
“Damn, boss, maybe you do have a death wish.”
Where the hell did that come from?
Hearing that same accusation twice in less than forty-eight hours was a problem, and Kolt Raynor, like any other operator, knew it. Gangster’s indictment last night was easy to ignore, but coming from Slapshot, a Unit noncom, it grabbed his attention. Hard punches like that, below the belt or not, if they weren’t a kiss of death, were definitely a kiss with severe warning labels.
Kolt stood motionless, staring at Slapshot, who had turned away. He couldn’t deny it. He heard Slapshot Lima Charlie, but did he really mean it? A death wish? Bullshit! Not Slap, we’re too tight, have been since day one. Kolt knew he could not only trust his men with his life, but trust the lives of his kids, if he ever had any, with Slapshot. That kind of trust was uncommon; mates like that made things worth doing, even worth dying for if need be.
Damn it. Maybe Gangster is right. Maybe things would be much better around the Unit if Kolt Raynor just didn’t get so damn lucky every time shit hit the fan. Eight fucking Purple Hearts and a dozen easy near-miss life-and-death episodes. Hell, it wasn’t like Kolt hadn’t given the other guy every chance in the world to take him out.
Kolt shook his head, dismissing that thought almost as fast as it came to him. He knew he was put on this earth to be a Delta Force operator. He knew he had a reputation as a damn fine operator, if also a rebel. A walking legend throughout the Unit Spine, someone to show off to visiting dignitaries and freshly starred general officers. Even so, Kolt wondered what the boys from Noble Squadron thought. How many of the guys sitting inside the Notri thought Kolt was off his rocker? For sure, he didn’t know all of them as well as he did the men in Mike Squadron. That would take time. But, they certainly heard about all his bullshit, as Gangster couched it, over the years. And what about Hawk? Did she think he had lost all sense of normalcy too? Unable to respect the risk after so many bombs, so much blood, with death knocking over and over, during scores of deployments, turning targets night and day?
Few would argue that Kolt hadn’t shouldered more than his share of the task over the years. Some say dumb luck got Kolt inside that hijacked American Airlines 767 from the cabin roof, took down American-born al Qaeda Daoud al-Amriki before he could assassinate the president, corralled Mohammad Ghafour in Pakistan, or drowned the slant-headed pointy-nosed Nadal the Romanian in a pool of nuclear spent fuel. Even dropping the Barrel Bomb Butcher wasn’t enough to silence the critics. Actually, it multiplied them.
Kolt realized time was slipping away and made his choice. He’d made a career of operating intuitively, making instinct decisions, and sometimes wild-ass guesses that more often than not turned out okay. He’d been dropped from Delta’s ranks twice, a first for an operator, but his resilience was just as unique. It would be more than just his ass if they lost the satellite feed that controlled the SpyLite from Greaves, or if the battery-powered laptop on the abandoned bar auto-rebooted. But, all things considered, he wasn’t about to let Hawk go down alone. No, not to prevent World War III, not for Seamstress and his mini nuke warhead intel, and not for Gangster.
Not for shit.
“Slapshot,” Kolt said, lightly grabbing him by the right arm just to get his undivided attention, “I hear you, but this one is on me.”
“Rog,” Slapshot said, “your call.”
“Put the SpyLite up ASAP, push it over Panmunjom,” Kolt said, “give it the max four-hour loiter time and program her GPS to recover back at Inchon near the hangar.”
“Inchon?”
“Yeah, who knows where we might be by then? We need to sterilize this place.”
Just as Slapshot turned to carry out Kolt’s orders, the cell inside Kolt’s thigh pocket vibrated. He let it buzz a few times, fully expecting it to be Gangster calling to either confirm he was playing well with others and hadn’t ignored his last order about the SpyLite, or that Hawk had tagged Seamstress.
Kolt slipped the Galaxy 4 out of the pocket and looked at the screen.
Hawk?!
Kolt quickly answered, afraid she might hang up. “This is Racer, you good?”
“That depends,” Hawk said. “Plan B in effect.”
“What plan B?”
“I’m taking Seamstress across the MDL into South Korea,” Hawk said. “Refuses to get on the train. He wants to defect.
”
“What the fuck?” Kolt said. “Slow down, give me some context, what’s changed?”
“At the hotwash, Kolt, no time now.”
Fuck! “Roger that,” Kolt said. “We’re putting a small UAV over you now. Where are you?”
“Orange two-story, but Kolt, I was hoping you could fly over here, just be close by in case. There are at least a dozen armed guards here.”
Fuck me! First the SpyLite and now the Little Birds.
Kolt hesitated for a few seconds, realizing that what Hawk was asking him to do was much more dangerous than simply putting a small plastic plane in the air. Exposing the Little Birds before Seamstress was even back on the train was not smart, but flying even nap-of-the-earth to Panmunjom in broad daylight could be suicide. Kolt knew he didn’t have too many options. In fact, only two came to mind: do as Hawk asks, or not.
“Kolt, are you there?” Hawk asked, sounding a little desperate. “Damn it! I could use some help here. I’m unarmed and not dressed for an E and E across the DMZ, especially dragging Seamstress with me.”
“Shit, you’re right, Hawk,” Kolt said. Escaping with an old man would likely get them both killed. “We are en route. I’ll keep the cell with me.”
“Oh God!” Hawk said. “Someone is banging on the bathroom door. I might be busted. Gotta go.”
“Trust your cover!” Kolt said. “Hawk? Hawk?”
Kolt looked at the Galaxy 4 to make sure she had hung up before he ran into the dining room, stopping at the edge of where the operators and helo pilots were catnapping or downing some army chow.
“Get it on!” Kolt barked. “Break out the MHs.”
In an instant, everyone scrambled to their feet, reaching back down to grab their rifles, special equipment, and rucksacks before shuffling to the front door and outside to the KOREX trailers. The Delta team leaders and Night Stalker pilots moved toward Kolt, who dug a colored eight-by-ten aerial of the Joint Security Area out of his pocket.
“FRAGO,” Kolt began, letting everyone know the fragmentary order he was about to issue trumped the original mission statement. “Hawk just called. She might be soft compromised at best. Seamstress wants to defect.”
