False Flag

by Jack Slater

  But if Trapp had failed, if he’d been caught, and was at this very moment a prisoner of the communist regime, or worse, his body was riddled with bullets and floating in the Yalu River, then to put it bluntly, the Agency was fucked.

  Emmanuel Alstyne had been the last name on the list that Jenkins had handed over shortly before meeting his untimely demise. His death, and the recovery of the files he’d taken with him to China, was supposed to have signaled the end of the threat that began on Bloody Monday, all those months before.

  And yet the mission had resulted not in the end of that threat, but the growth of an entirely new—and far more dangerous—one.

  “What did we miss?” he muttered.

  “You say something, boss?” Kyle said, glancing up from his screen.

  “How are you guys getting along with the drive?” Mitchell asked instead.

  Alstyne’s flash drive had arrived stateside not much more than twelve hours after Trapp landed in Guam. Since then, Partey and Greaves had been tag-teaming in their attempts to crack the encryption. So far, they’d had little success.

  Partey glanced at Greaves’ screen and grimaced. “Not well. The thing’s a fortress. We might get lucky, but I’m not counting on it.”

  Mitchell formed a fist and punched his palm. A crack rang out in a cramped, stuffy basement. He was beyond frustrated. Mike Mitchell was a man who had always prided himself in being one step ahead of the curve. He was his country’s fiercest defender, both as a young man with a pistol in his hand, and today, running the CIA’s covert operations around the globe.

  The occupant of his chair wasn’t supposed to be flying blind. And yet that’s exactly how Mitchell felt. The operation in Macau had pulled the curtain back on an entirely new threat, one which was spiraling rapidly out of control, and yet they were still no clearer as to what was going on than they had been when the situation blew up in their faces.

  “There must be something on that drive,” Mitchell mused. “Something the North Koreans needed so badly they were willing to piss off the Chinese to get it.”

  Kyle nodded.

  It was the same problem they’d been tussling with for days, ever since identifying the tattoo on the body in Macau. China was North Korea’s closest—and these days, pretty much only—remaining ally. The Chinese supplied food, fuel and weapons to the isolated communist state, mostly out of fear of the consequences of the regime collapsing, causing millions of starving refugees to flood across the Chinese border.

  So for a North Korean special forces unit to risk shooting up a Chinese hotel—particularly one with hundreds of foreign guests—was unprecedented. If the Chinese closed the border, the North Korean economy would collapse overnight, taking the regime and the military with it. Which meant that for some reason, the North Koreans were rolling the dice on the survival of their very way of life.

  “It doesn’t add up,” Kyle agreed. “From everything we know about Chairman Song, all he cares about is his own survival. If the Chinese turn on him, he’ll lose his grip on power. He’s always been cautious. Why change now?”

  “That’s your job.” Mitchell grinned weakly. “You’re the analyst.”

  Kyle didn’t smile. He merely chewed on his lip, his enormous brain turning the question over in his head. Mitchell had no doubt that if anyone could crack the problem, it would be Kyle. The young analyst was a prodigy, renowned in the Agency for drawing connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information that no other analyst could.

  A satellite handset rang, the piercing electronic warble distracting the two men from their conversation. Greaves didn’t move, his attention swallowed whole by the green lines dancing across his computer screen.

  Mitchell started for the handset and answered the call, putting it on speaker. “Authenticate,” he said.

  “Good to hear your voice, Mike,” Trapp replied, the encryption compressing his voice. “I read Oscar, Mike, Five, November, Yankee, X-ray.”

  “You too, Hangman,” Mitchell said. “What’s your status?”

  “I’m across the border,” Trapp replied. Mitchell pumped his fist with relief. “It’s about a hundred miles from here to the location you provided. But from what Jack’s telling me, there’s no way of getting close by road. Not unless I want half the North Korean army on my tail.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Jack will get me as close as he can without risking his life. I have to take the last part on foot. Maybe twenty, thirty miles through the mountains. It won’t be quick.”

  Mitchell grimaced. “Things are heating up here, Hangman. Any chance you can speed up that timeline?”

  There was a pause. Mitchell hated himself for asking the question. He had been in Trapp’s shoes more times than he could count: deep behind enemy lines, surrounded by forces who wouldn’t just capture an enemy agent, but torture and kill them to boot, and he’d always hated the rear echelon motherfuckers who tried to hurry him along. Mitchell had always operated by the mantra: ‘slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.’

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Trapp replied guardedly. “But the terrain is a real bitch, and traveling by day will markedly increase my chances of detection.”

  “Understood, Hangman,” Mitchell said, wincing at what he was asking. “Do what you can.”

  “How are things on your end?” Trapp asked, wind whistling down the phone line and crackling in the speaker.

  “Not good,” Mitchell sighed. “The Chinese are pulling out all of their diplomatic staff from the embassy and consulates, and we’re about two minutes to midnight on the nuclear clock.”

  “Say again, Langley?”

  “You heard me correctly, Hangman. If we don’t find a way out of this mess, then might not be much of a planet left for us to fight over.”

  36

  Trapp walked back to the truck. Over the course of a very long career, both with special forces, and then the Agency, he had been on dozens, perhaps hundreds of operations, in more countries than he could count.

  But he’d never been all that stood between two superpowers and all-out nuclear war. He wasn’t sure he liked the added pressure on his shoulders.

  “Wife and kids okay?” Jack joked. He flicked his cigarette onto the ground, where it sparked, a flaming ember caught by the wind.

  “Not so much,” Trapp replied. “We’re going to have to move our timetable up.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” Jack said, reaching with trembling fingers for the cigarette packet stuffed into his breast pocket.

  Trapp hadn’t known the smuggler long, but he was beginning to like the man. Though he was putting on a brave face, he was clearly nervous about what he was doing. Which, Trapp reflected, was entirely sensible. Smuggling liquor for the North Korean elite was one thing—a dangerous business, but one for which the punishment was simply a creased billfold slipped into the right palm. But trafficking an American agent into the country?

  That was the kind of treason for which a man would be punished slowly. And painfully.

  Jack’s truck had North Korean government plates—an investment that had set him back tens of thousands of dollars. And yet it was, he’d assured his passenger, the best money he’d ever spent. The plates allowed the vehicle to travel through most checkpoints without being stopped. The average North Korean soldier had no interest in mixing his nose up in government business.

  On their journey already, the truck had been waved through several roadblocks, Jack scarcely slowing the vehicle as the barriers were pulled apart and they rumbled through.

  “So, what’s the hurry?” Jack asked after lighting another cigarette and taking a long drag.

  The smell of the smoke reached Trapp’s nostrils, and though he’d given the addictive death sticks up almost a decade earlier, the conversation he’d just had with Langley made him want to take the habit back up again.

  Trapp gestured at the lit cigarette in Jack’s fingers. “Any of those going spare?”

>   “I didn’t know you smoked,” Jack said with a kinked eyebrow, tapping one out of the packet and tossing it over.

  “I gave up,” Trapp replied gruffly, catching a light from the smuggler’s burning cigarette.

  “Your call was that good, huh?”

  “You don’t miss much.” Trapp grinned, inhaling a deep breath of the noxious smoke. It burned his lungs, and yet tasted like an old friend. He savored the familiar yet long-forgotten rush of nicotine, then tossed the cigarette onto the gravel road and extinguished it underneath his boot.

  “It’s how I stay alive,” Jack quipped, while also matching Trapp’s gaze with an expression that demanded he be told the truth.

  It was only right, Trapp thought, to share it. Both their lives, after all, were equally at risk—especially if the smuggler agreed to go beyond his original remit, and help Trapp still further. He filled the man in on his call with Mitchell, watching the man’s face grow paler and paler as he appreciated the consequences.

  “What do you need from me?” Jack asked when Trapp was finally finished.

  “I need you to get me closer to the camp. Close enough that I can crawl the rest of the way. We’re running out of time.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “You in?”

  Jack stubbed out his cigarette and returned to the cab of his truck. “Sure. Why not?”

  37

  Eliza Ikeda was losing track of time.

  She watched everything that happened in the small, twisted ward with eagle-eyed attention, storing every detail away for future reference. And yet the longer she lay on that narrow camp bed, breathing in infected air, studying her fellow captives for any signs of symptoms, listening to their plaintive cries of fear, the less hope she had.

  The facility maintained a simple, clockwork routine. At least, Ikeda thought it was like clockwork, but without access to a clock, or even the briefest sight of the sky overhead, it was hard to tell.

  There seemed to be two shifts: Ikeda thought it likely that one worked through the day, the other operating at night, though it was entirely possible that they followed another schedule in this timeless prison.

  By Ikeda’s muddled count, she had been locked up in the laboratory ward for almost two days. She wondered what the North Korean colonel with the scarred face was waiting for. Why hadn’t he interrogated her? Was he waiting for the prisoners to fall sick around her?

  That would make sense, she thought. What better demonstration could there be of his power? Perhaps he thought that the sight of the prisoners bleeding out around her would make her crack.

  Maybe it would.

  Ikeda’s stomach had been a bundle of nerves the entire time she’d been stuck here. She wasn’t good at waiting, she preferred action—but in this place, it was impossible. The only option left to her was to wait, to wait as her death marched onward with every passing second, as the infection burrowed itself deeper.

  Perhaps the longer this slow torture lasted, the more Ikeda feared for her life, the easier it would be for him to break her when he finally came.

  Or maybe he was out there right now, watching through one of the cameras that whirred overhead, underneath the thick black dome. Studying her half-clothed body with twisted fascination.

  Eliza blinked and shook off the thought. She needed to distract herself. She ran through her mental notes once more, examining the daily routine for patterns, for weaknesses, for anything she could exploit.

  Two North Korean scientists entered the ward, flanked by as many guards. It unfolded the same way every time. The scientists were female, the guards male—and armed, with local knockoffs of the AK-47. They wore no body armor, only dark green fatigues loose around their waists, emphasizing their gaunt frames.

  Eliza forced herself to choke down the foul sustenance that was delivered with each shift change: maggot-ridden white rice, with no attempt made at flavoring. Twice, she noticed the guards stealing food from the prisoners’ trays.

  She forced herself to eat because if came to it, she knew, the two guards would prove no match for her strength. They appeared to be conscripts, nervous at their current posting, not highly trained military personnel, and visibly weak and underfed. Every time they entered the room, Eliza pictured how she would take them down. Still, she needed to remain in fighting condition if she was to have a chance at success.

  First, she would need to break the small piece of wire free from the underside of the camp bed. She had weakened it sufficiently already for that act to take just a matter of seconds. The bed had no sheets, no pillow, nothing to hide what she was doing from the camera overhead, or the observation deck, so she would need to act fast.

  The cuffs around her wrist and ankle were of a simple construction, similar to the ones used for handcuffs back home. Ikeda had broken out of similar restraints hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. But every time, it had been in training, with no consequences for failure.

  When she finally chose to act, that would not be the case. One mistake, and the best-case scenario was finding the muzzle of an AK-47 pressed against the back of her head. The worst case would end up with her body fluids painting her plastic mattress red.

  Which wouldn’t be ideal.

  Ikeda’s mind traveled to the plight of the four American captives. Just like the Chinese prisoners, they were terrified—though perhaps more vocal about their anger. Twice one of the male Americans, a squat man who looked to be in his early 50s, with a linebacker’s broad shoulders and the gut of a man who had allowed an athlete’s body to go to seed, had confronted the scientists, demanding to know what was happening to him and his wife.

  It hadn’t ended well.

  The man’s wife was beautiful. Ikeda didn’t know her name, but the dark-haired woman carried herself with a consummate grace, refusing to give up, even in these horrendous conditions.

  Ikeda wished that she could say something to comfort her fellow countrymen. To assure them that she was on their side, that she would get them out of here, whatever it took. Then again, those immortal lines, “I’m with the government, and I’m here to help,” had never seemed so apt.

  Precisely what could she do to assist them? Revealing her true identity—and that of her employer—might only make their plight seem more hopeless. After all, if a CIA operative could be captured, what hope did they have?

  So instead, she concentrated on figuring a way out.

  Eliza knew that her only chance of escape lay in wrestling a weapon from one of the guards. It would give her options: either a way to force herself through the locked door that led to the laboratory, or the option to simply shoot through the observation window. She would have to move fast and hope that there would be few guards on duty.

  She grimaced, scrunching her hand into a fist and biting her fingernails against her palm, until the pain drew a tear to her eye.

  The electronic door lock snicked, and Eliza resisted the temptation to immediately snap her head to the left. Instead, she moved it slowly, lethargically, as though exhausted, or wallowing at the bottom of a pit of depression. It was the shift change. As before, two men strode through the door, weapons drawn, but not aimed at anything in particular.

  “Hey, asshole,” the squat American prisoner shouted. He stood up, the chain around his wrist rattling. All eyes in the room turned to his performance, but not Eliza’s. She watched the guards intently. Their reaction was the only variable that counted.

  “You better tell me what the hell is going on,” the American growled. “I don’t know what kind of game you sick bastards are playing, but believe me, you won’t get away with this!”

  Eliza couldn’t help but think that, unless she was able to pull a rabbit out of a hat, the North Koreans most certainly would get away with this kidnapping. Pulling her eyes away from the two guards for a second, she glanced at the American. His wife was stretching over, attempting to calm him down.

  “Andy,” the woman whispered. “Andy, honey, don’t make them angry
. You know what happened last time.”

  Eliza picked up a sound and her attention snapped back to the doorway. One of the guards, a short, thin man with yellowed, rotten, rearranged teeth, grimaced a twisted smile, waving his rifle languidly in the air. He began to shout, bellowing an unbroken stream of thickly accented Korean. Eliza had to concentrate hard to understand it. It sounded like a regional dialect—strangely formal compared to the language she’d grown up learning, taught by South Korean teachers, watching their shows, reading their books.

  “Lie down!” the guard screamed. “Follow that bitch’s advice, or I’ll put a bullet through your heart!”

  Eliza’s pulse began to race. The guard seemed unhinged, and she began to wonder if perhaps he was truly insane. She knew that methamphetamine use was common in North Korea, used to propel the human body to work the inhuman hours mandated by the government—and also to quell the population’s hunger pains. Nothing comes without strings, however, and as America had long since come to learn, meth is linked to not just physical, but also severe mental degradation. The CIA operative was certain that was what was happening here.

  To Eliza’s right, she heard Chen cough. The Chinese girl made a thick, hacking sound, but the CIA operative thought nothing of it. She had more pressing business to attend to: the increasingly likely chance of the prisoner called Andy ending up with a line of lead piercing his chest.

  And then Chen began to weep.

  Eliza turned her head to look at the Chinese prisoner, not because the sound of the girl’s crying was new to her, but because the tone of it was so different to the sound she’d heard before. Chen’s chest heaved, desperately sucking in air through her teeth as panic overtook the young woman.

  She was sitting cross-legged on her mattress, holding her hands to her mouth, dark-brown eyes wide and glistening with terror.

  Eliza’s stomach dropped out from beneath her. Not because of the fear and pain in the Chinese girl’s eyes, or the likelihood that Andy was about to end up with a bullet between his, but because Chen’s fingers were stained with sticky red blood.