False Flag

by Jack Slater

  Trapp waited, drinking in the glorious cool of the air-conditioning as a CIA technician with rust-red hair tied up in a ponytail established a video link with Mitchell’s sub-basement in the bowels of Langley. His right knee thrummed up and down in an endless rhythm, the only outward sign that betrayed the tension that was rising in his body.

  “That’s it, sir,” the technician said, tapping a key. “Just initialize when you’re ready.”

  “Got it,” Trapp grunted.

  She cocked her head. “You need anything else?”

  “Not right yet.”

  She made her exit, and the second the secure door shut behind her, Trapp started the call. The video blurred, then resolved, and the faces of Mike Mitchell and Kyle Partey appeared side-by-side from thousands of miles away on the immersive LCD screens opposite Trapp.

  “What the hell happened out there, Jason?” Mitchell asked. The short, wiry Agency official looked strained, the crows’ feet that decorated his eyes more pronounced than ever, and Trapp guessed he’d been working flat-out ever since the operation in Macau went sideways.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Trapp replied. “Listen, Mike, I need you to tell me you know where she is.”

  Mitchell grimaced. “No joy, Jason,” he replied. “We’re blind in the whole region, and honestly —”

  “Honestly what?” Trapp growled. He had a very good sense of what his boss was about to say; he just wanted to hear the man say it.

  The deputy director fixed him with a level stare. “Honestly, Jason, in my position I’m forced to make impossible decisions. And one of those is that I cannot put the life of one operative above the lives of millions of Americans.”

  Underneath the metal trestle table that was the only piece of furniture in the cramped communications room, Trapp gripped his dancing knee, digging his fingers in until his knuckles went white. He knew very well that for years, Mike Mitchell was one of the CIA’s most trustworthy—and deadly—field operatives.

  He wasn’t some faceless Agency bureaucrat pushing pieces around a chessboard. He’d gotten his hands dirty perhaps more times than anyone alive, at least before Langley’s seventh floor swallowed him whole.

  “Do you have the drive?” Kyle interjected. As always, he was dressed like an Oxford don, the leather elbow patches on his tweed jacket occasionally visible through the video feed.

  Trapp nodded. “I don’t know if it’s Alstyne’s or the replica. I suspect the former. Ikeda wouldn’t have bothered hiding the fake.”

  “She did good,” Mitchell muttered, his expression pained. Trapp realized that the man was hurting just as much as he was. He knew it wasn’t easy to send men and women into combat, less still the endless gray zone that Trapp and his ilk operated within.

  “She did,” Trapp replied, his voice firm, expression unbroken as he gazed at the camera — and directly into Mitchell’s eyes. “And I’m going to get her back.”

  Mitchell shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Jason. We’re a hair’s breadth away from an all-out war with the Chinese. President Nash has directed me to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.”

  Trapp laughed bitterly. “And how’s that going?”

  Mitchell slumped in his seat. “Not well.”

  “Who were those guys, Mike?” Trapp asked, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the metal table. “They were pros, I know that much. And they didn’t give a fuck about cutting those babysitters to shreds. They knew exactly who Alstyne was, and why they needed him. How the hell was that possible?”

  Kyle glanced at his boss. “We don’t know,” he said. “We suspect that whoever they were, they had a source inside Chinese intelligence. We kept the circle tight on this one. Only about six people knew we were running this op.”

  Trapp thumped the surface of the table. The metallic sound clanged, reverberating around the small, dark room. “Dammit, Kyle. You’re telling me you’ve got no idea who they were?”

  The young analyst grimaced. “Maybe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Trapp snapped, his patience now tested almost to breaking point.

  “It means,” Mitchell replied, taking up the torch from his beleaguered subordinate, “that those guys are a myth. They aren’t supposed to exist.”

  “Details,” Trapp growled. “Now.”

  Technically, Mike Mitchell was one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most senior clandestine officers. He was running point on a covert mission of vengeance for the President of the United States himself. And yet he knew better than to take offense at Trapp’s tone. He eyed the exasperated operative calmly and waited the tension out before speaking—asserting his authority without ever resorting to raising his voice.

  Trapp nodded in silent acceptance.

  Mitchell began. “What Kyle said was correct. We think we’ve identified the men who disrupted your operation in Macau. At least, one of them. The tattoo matches the description of a unit insignia from a North Korean special operations group.”

  “North Korean?” Trapp muttered, his mind moving fast. That didn’t make any sense, and yet it also somehow fit. That was often the way with clandestine operations.

  “We know very little about them. Just rumors passed to us by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, from debriefings they’ve done with defectors.”

  Trapp listened, spellbound.

  “They call themselves Unit 61. From what we know, they were established along with several other similar organizations in order to provide hard currency for the North Korean regime. They control methamphetamine production and distribution, sex trafficking, even currency counterfeiting that’s good enough that even the Treasury can’t tell the difference between legitimate notes and the ones they produce. You name it, they’ve got a finger in it—even supposedly hiring themselves out as mercenaries.”

  “You think that’s what it was?” Trapp asked, his irritation forgotten and replaced with puzzlement. “You think someone hired them to do a job?”

  Mitchell spread his hands. “We have no idea. It’s a theory we’re kicking around, but like I said, we’re flying blind over here. I need you to get back to Langley immediately. We’ll arrange transport from Guam.”

  “No way,” Trapp replied immediately.

  “We need to analyze that drive, Jason,” Mitchell said, his jaw set. “If the North Koreans have access to our nation’s military secrets, we’ve got eighty thousand servicemen patrolling the DMZ whose lives are on the line. For all we know that drive contains information on how to bring down our air defense networks.”

  “Be my guest,” Trapp snapped. “The drive’s all yours. But I’m not babysitting a fucking thumb drive on a flight back to Andrews. Get the navy to fly it back. I’m sure some Marine staff sergeant will jump at the chance to get a week’s leave just for chaining it to his wrist. But I’m not coming with it. I’m useless over there.”

  The tension between the two men was palpable, even through the fiber-optic cable. Kyle glanced from his boss, into the camera, and then back again, looking as jumpy as a field mouse.

  “So what do you propose, Jason?”

  “I’m going to Pyongyang,” Trapp replied, the decision made at just about the moment the words escaped his mouth.

  “You’re going to Pyongyang?” Mitchell replied with an expression of stunned astonishment on his face. In truth, Trapp was just as surprised as he was.

  “And what, precisely, do you plan to do when you land? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re half a foot taller than me, and I’d tower over most North Koreans. Not to mention you’re as white as the driven snow, and the locals most certainly are not. The second you land, the secret police will stick to you like shit on a stick.”

  Trapp grinned, encouraged by the fact that his boss hadn’t immediately shut down the idea. The two men had worked together for long enough to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Trapp knew that he could be foolhardy at times, putting him
self into situations of danger that would make other men piss their pants—and doing so with frightening regularity. But he didn’t risk his life for nothing, nor treat it as a game, as other men did. He wasn’t an adrenaline chaser. He’d chosen this line of work because there were few men better at it alive.

  “And there was me thinking I was working up a nice tan.” He grinned.

  Mitchell kinked his eyebrow.

  “Fine.” Trapp shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. But I figure doing something’s got to be better than sitting around here waiting for the world to burn. I don’t believe for a second that the Chinese are behind what happened the other night. But if we don’t get ahead of this thing, then that won’t matter a damn bit. This Unit 61, whoever they are, they are our only lead—right?”

  A silence filled the line. Trapp waited it out.

  “Right.”

  “Then I need to pull the thread, and see where it takes me. Because if I don’t, in a week’s time President Nash will be ordering an airstrike on Beijing, and you’ll both be in a bunker somewhere under the Potomac as the nukes rain down out of the sky. It doesn’t matter if I throw away my life, Mike. I’m used to it. But we can’t let this thing escalate.”

  “Okay,” Mitchell finally relented, his expression torn between pride and fear, like a father watching his favored son head to war. “But we do it my way.”

  28

  Trapp entered China for the second time that week, this time traveling on a Canadian passport and hitching a ride on a commercial flight from South Korea.

  He landed in Dandong, a city of over a million people, with several million more in the greater urban area. It was larger than all but five American cities, and yet it was a place that few outside of China had ever heard of.

  Once again, Trapp couldn’t help but contemplate the sheer size of this vast country—and the futility of ever going to war with her. America had the greatest military the world had ever seen. Trapp should know. He’d fought in it for years, receiving the best training any warfighter in history ever had.

  That was how he knew that going to war here would be a disaster the likes of which his country had never tasted before. President Nash could send in the navy, the army, the Marines and the air force, and paste the Chinese coast with precision guided ordnance until the South China Sea ran red with blood. The first day of the war alone would cost billions just in spent cruise missiles and JDAM bombs.

  Hundreds of thousands might die, maybe more.

  And it would all be for nothing. As Trapp exited the gleaming surroundings of Dandong airport, tasting the thick, humid air of the Chinese summer, a stark contrast from the air-conditioned arrivals hall, and looked out on the endless buildings, he knew that if America picked a fight with this country, it would be like Germany invading the Soviet Union in 1941, or Napoleon doing the same a hundred and fifty years earlier. It would make the mire of Vietnam look like a cakewalk.

  China had a hundred cities just like Dandong, cities of more than a million people. America had ten. It would take the American military months to replenish the weaponry expended in the first few weeks of the war, maybe years. But China was blessed with a population that stretched beyond a billion souls, and factories that had swallowed the American manufacturing sector whole.

  If America lost an aircraft carrier to a Chinese missile attack, it would take more than a decade to replace it. No, as much as Trapp loved his country, he knew that anyone who believed this war was winnable was dead wrong. The only way for America to triumph would be to reduce China to a smoldering rubble. It would make the aftermath of the Iraq war look like a kid’s squabble in comparison.

  It was a battle in which neither side could triumph, but both could lose.

  Trapp’s boss, Deputy Director Mike Mitchell, had impressed upon him the urgency of his mission. The hawks in Washington were beating the drums of a war they themselves wouldn’t have to fight, the press was stirring up outrage, with wall-to-wall coverage of Chinese atrocities, both real and manufactured. Social media was alive with rumor and speculation.

  President Nash needed a way out. He needed proof that the Chinese had nothing to do with what had happened to America’s satellites—and he needed it fast. If events kept spiraling out of control, then the hows and whys of the situation wouldn’t much matter. The Asia-Pacific region was simmering like Europe on the eve of the First World War. It wouldn’t take much to spark a conflagration of apocalyptic proportions: just one more miscalculation, one miscommunication, and the world would descend into an orgy of fire.

  And so Jason Trapp found himself in China with a simple brief: get his president the evidence he needed.

  The city of Dandong sat just across the Yalu River from North Korea itself, connected with the reclusive country by the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, an iron structure built by the Imperial Japanese Army when they occupied the area during the Second World War. It was a stark reminder of the last time the world’s great powers had gone to war. Trapp vowed to do everything it took to prevent that outcome from happening again.

  He hailed a cab, and with a little difficulty owing to the language barrier, communicated the address of a nondescript business hotel downtown. His driver cut through traffic like a madman, swerving between trucks heading for the border with North Korean license plates which were as heavily laden as they were aged, and expensive SUVs with Chinese plates. The contrast between the wealth of the countries couldn’t have been greater.

  Trapp wondered as he drove, eyes swallowing every detail of the city around him, why the North Korean people didn’t simply rise up and cast off their oppressors.

  He knew the answer, of course.

  It wasn’t just that they were brainwashed into believing that their Supreme Leader, Chairman Song, was born at the summit of the most sacred Korean holy site, Mount Paektu, or that the volcanic mountain had spewed flame when the chairman’s predecessor died, and thus had somehow acquired supernatural properties. It was that the population was beaten and starved into submission, and any spark of resistance snuffed out before it had a chance to spread.

  Trapp leaned forward and tapped the cab driver on his shoulder. “You speak any English?”

  The man glanced back and grimaced apologetically, his head dancing from side to side. “A little.”

  The road ahead of them lead in a straight line to the glistening Yalu River. On the Chinese side, glass and steel buildings sprouted into the sky, and cranes almost too numerous to count swung their heavy payloads in graceful arcs as day by day, even hour by hour, Dandong grew larger.

  By contrast, the North Korean side was flat, brown and agrarian.

  Trapp jerked his head at the other side of the river. “Have you ever been over there?”

  The driver shook his head, taking his eyes off the road as he pulled off a passing maneuver which would’ve had him arrested back home. “What for? Nothing there.”

  Good question, Trapp thought. He was beginning to ask that question himself.

  “Do they ever come over here? Refugees.”

  “Long time ago. Twenty years, during the famine.”

  “But not today?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Trapp asked, frowning.

  From this vantage point, the Yalu River seemed neither particularly wide, nor unusually fierce. River craft zipped up and down, paying no attention to the border, which nominally lay in the center of the river. It seemed an easy enough task to cross the body of water—and given the disparity of wealth between the two countries, Trapp had no idea why anyone would choose to stay on the other side of the border.

  The cabbie gave Trapp a gap-toothed grin, and made the sign of a gun with his fingers. He cocked his thumb, placed it against Trapp’s head, once again tearing his attention away from the road in a way that made his passenger’s stomach churn, and fired.

  “The border guards—they shoot?”

  The driver shrugged. “Whole family. All punished. All die.
”

  “Damn,” Trapp whispered.

  It was possible that the man was embellishing the situation for the sake of the impressionable foreign businessman. But he didn’t think so. From what little he could see, North Korea was a grim, desolate place. One any sane person would be looking to escape, not enter.

  So what did that make him?

  As they pulled up in front of the hotel, a full ten minutes ahead of schedule—at least according to the estimate the maps application on Trapp’s phone had suggested—he tipped the man double. Not for his efforts behind the wheel, which had endangered Trapp’s life more than any enemy agent, but for the reminder of what he was going up against.

  It might just save his life.

  Trapp wandered around the streets of Dandong as the sun began to set, uncomfortably aware that he was almost a foot taller than most of the population, and—it seemed—just about the only Caucasian for a hundred miles. He stood out, and in his experience that was rarely a good thing. Especially in a country like China, and even more especially at a time of heightened tensions such as this.

  Dandong was no Hong Kong, nor was it Macau. There was no way to simply blend in here, among the thousands of traveling businessmen and ex-pats who inhabited and visited each city, drawn to the lights and glamor like flies to honey. Trapp had no doubt that even now, he would be on the radar of the local branch of the secret police.

  As his CIA briefer had informed him before he made the journey, China had more surveillance cameras per citizen than any country on earth. Combined with industry-leading facial recognition technology, it was entirely possible that every inhabitant of Dandong was tracked from morning to night, everywhere they went, and everything they did recorded in a database.

  So Trapp took precautions.

  He wore a black baseball cap, pulled down low over his face, a thin carbon fiber prosthetic worn underneath both his upper and lower lip to subtly thicken and change his features, and had slipped contact lenses into his eyes before leaving his hotel room, to disguise their unusual, split nature. Unlike anyone else he had never met, Trapp’s left eye was gray, but his right was as dark as the hull of the submarine that plucked him from the warm embrace of the South China Sea several days earlier.