False Flag

by Jack Slater

  And she was woefully unprepared to survive it.

  “Boss?”

  Mitchell’s eyes flicked open, and he saw Kyle staring back at him, the bookish analyst’s face contorted with worry. The director of the CIA’s Special Activities division forced himself to snap out of his train of thought. “Okay—tell me what you can do in forty minutes.”

  Greaves cleared his throat. “The plan is to take low-resolution shots of every likely route from the target base to any port, airport or air force base north of the DMZ. We’ll feed those images into a search algorithm, and…hope we get lucky.”

  Mitchell frowned at the man’s sheepish expression. He had hoped for something a little more scientific than getting lucky.

  “Let’s go back to basics,” he said. “What the hell do these guys want?”

  The question hung in the thick atmosphere of the basement without answer. The various pieces of the puzzle had bounced around in Mitchell’s brain for days, coming further into focus with each new discovery, each revelation of a new threat, but never seeming to fit together.

  “We can assume that they were behind our satellites being knocked off-line. Somehow they gained access to China’s anti-satellite capability—including this new satellite-killer—and deployed it. They tried to steal the secrets on Alstyne’s thumb drive. But to what end?”

  “I think I have an answer to that,” Greaves said.

  The large man ran his fingers through his dyed hair, attempting to tame the long locks, but inevitably failing. He grabbed a laptop and set it down in front of Mitchell. “I cracked the encryption on the thumb drive.”

  “When?” Mitchell growled.

  Greaves shot his adopted boss an anxious glance. “Um, about forty seconds ago…”

  Mitchell waved his fingers in apology. “Fine, spill.”

  “Okay, so they wanted to blind us, right? To take out our biggest advantage over the Chinese.”

  “Right.”

  “And our working theory is that Unit 61 is behind everything, correct?”

  “Doc—I suggest you get to the point. We’re running out of time.”

  Greaves cleared his throat anxiously. “Well, what if their goal was to turn China’s weapons against us, and ours against them? To provoke a war between the two countries.”

  Mitchell’s eyes gleamed with intrigue. “Go on…”

  “The first attack against our satellites got me thinking. It was a false flag—the North Koreans did it knowing we would blame the Chinese. Same with the sat-killer, Project Songbird. The Chinese are the only ones with the capability, ergo we were always going to blame them.”

  “So how does the drive fit in?” Kyle asked.

  “I cross-checked it with anything to do with biological weapons. It was just a hunch. But I got a hit.”

  “Doc…” Mitchell growled. “Sometime this week would be great.”

  “I found a reference to a DOD research project from back in the ʹ80s, codenamed AFTERMATH. It was carried out by a company that Atlas later acquired, that’s how it ended up on the drive. The idea was to create a biological weapon that could be used in the event of all-out war with the Russkies. It was only to be released in the event that we were losing.”

  “What did it do?”

  “They wanted to create a smart bioweapon, one that would wipe out only the Russians and leave us unaffected. It didn’t work, of course. Back then the technology wasn’t good enough. They shut it down in ʹ86.”

  Mitchell’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t get it.”

  Greaves shrugged. “I might be wrong. But I think the North Koreans found a way to build that weapon. I think they are about to release it. And I think they want to blame it on us.”

  The pieces clicked into place in Mitchell’s mind. It was a stretch, but it just about fit. The North Koreans were trying to provoke a war between China and America, by attacking each country and blaming it on the other. Two simultaneous false flag operations, using technology that only the other could have created, to make the finger of blame unmissable.

  But that means…

  The US wasn’t the target of the bioweapons at all. China was. And right now, a worldwide conflagration hung in the balance. If that bioweapon got released, or the sat-killer was activated—or worse—if both happened at the same time, then war would be unavoidable.

  Across the basement, a computer pinged. “What the hell is that?” Mitchell grunted, his mind roiling as he tried to assimilate this new piece of information.

  Greaves stood up and lumbered over to the computer. He frowned, tapped a key, then turned to face his boss. “The keyhole satellite just picked up the location of the Chinese sat-killer control terminal.”

  “Xishang?”

  The data scientist shook his head. “No. North Korea.”

  43

  Trapp prowled the shadowed streets of the North Korean military base, thankful for the fact that even the armed forces appeared to be affected by the shortages of electricity that afflicted the reclusive, mountainous country.

  He was hunched over in a vain attempt to hide his true size, but knew that if anyone got close, the ruse would quickly be discovered. The stolen uniform couldn’t decide whether to be tighter around his chest or his thighs.

  He glanced down at himself, briefly examining the stolen uniform in the glow of a ray of moonlight. It was plain, patched in places, and threadbare in others. Its former owner must have been an enlisted man, he figured, which meant that he would have to be careful. It would have been better to have stolen an officer’s uniform, to give overzealous guards a second thought before they approached him, but beggars could not be choosers.

  It appeared that the vast majority of the camp’s inhabitants were asleep, a fact for which Trapp was thankful. A light breeze bit at his exposed face, carrying the yowling sound of tussling cats—perhaps picking over the garbage pile to the rear of the base.

  He absently wondered if they had found the body he had left in his wake.

  The sound of a match striking exploded in the still mountain air, and Trapp pressed himself against the wall of the nearest barracks building, a one-story concrete structure with no windows on his side. In the darkness, he was almost invisible.

  A man walked into view, pausing briefly to light a cigarette held gently between his lips. It flared, and then he tossed the lit match against the ground. It arced through the darkness like a firework, and Trapp followed its progress all the way. It exploded in a flurry of sparks, and then disappeared.

  The man resumed his progress, wandering ever closer toward Trapp’s position. By now, the CIA operative’s wraithlike eyes were perfectly accustomed to the darkness. He’d left the night vision scope in his pocket, knowing that his opposite number’s night vision would have been wiped out by the act of striking the match and lighting his cigarette—and thus that he had the advantage.

  In a way, the ease of the operation so far disgusted Trapp.

  He welcomed it, of course, but if his unit had been this lax with perimeter security when he was in the army, they would have been chewed out six ways to Sunday. But the men of Unit 61—as fearsome a reputation as they had in the field—were arrogant on home turf. They thought they were safe in their mountain fortress.

  They were complacent.

  Still, Trapp’s heartbeat thundered in his chest—the blood rushing in his ears so loudly it was almost impossible to believe that the man now only a few feet distant from him could not hear the ruckus.

  But, patently, he could not.

  The man hummed an unfamiliar tune, and took one last, fateful step in Trapp’s direction. The experienced operator did not hesitate. He exploded out of the darkness, the blade of his knife invisible. His boots scraped against the ground, but otherwise he moved silently.

  His target’s head turned, startled by the sound, but too late. Before his eyes could focus on the newfound threat, Trapp was upon him, hand clamped over his mouth, blade pressed against his throat, and ho
t breath caressing the skin of his cheek. Trapp smiled malevolently. “Don’t you dare fucking move.”

  The man froze, trembling, but did precisely as Trapp ordered. The CIA operative smiled coldly and released his grasp on his prisoner just a touch. He brought one finger to his mouth and made a shushing motion, and waited until his captive acknowledged the request.

  “You speak English?” Trapp growled.

  The North Korean officer looked up to the assailant with terrified, uncomprehending eyes. Trapp grimaced. The limits of his plan had come immediately into focus.

  He tried again, reaching for his Mandarin. “What about Chinese?”

  His captive’s eyes flared in understanding. The man’s head bobbed up and down anxiously. “Yes,” he whispered. “A little.”

  Trapp’s own command of the language was rusty — and that was putting it kindly—but it would have to do.

  “Good,” he grunted. “Tell me where you’re keeping the American.”

  The North Korean officer practically whimpered at Trapp’s demand, shaking his head in protest. “I cannot.”

  At least, that’s what Trapp thought he said. He couldn’t be exactly sure.

  Trapp pressed the blade of his knife against his prisoner’s throat. It was razor-sharp. He’d honed it himself, and now he tested the blade against the man’s skin, drawing a single bead of blood.

  “Try that again,” he said. “And this time, give me the answer I’m looking for.”

  He caressed the man’s throat with the blade, pressing his palm against his captive’s mouth to stifle his terrified whimpers. He leaned forward, pressing his lips right up against the man’s left ear, and whispered, “Let’s take that from the top. Where is the American?”

  The North Korean said nothing for the longest time, and Trapp was preparing to repeat himself when he finally spoke. “I tell you,” he stammered in broken Mandarin, “I die.”

  Trapp shrugged. That wasn’t his problem. “You don’t,” he enunciated slowly, “you still die.”

  He punctuated his statement by tapping the blade of his knife against the officer’s throat. The man got the message.

  “They are in the north side of the camp. The big warehouse, Building 12.”

  Trapp frowned. Either Unit 61 was holding an entire menagerie of American prisoners, or—more likely—he needed to work on his Mandarin pronouns. Either way, he could figure out the details later. Right now, the clock was ticking. Every moment he lingered was another in which the alarm could be raised. And once that happened, this operation would get very hairy indeed.

  He tapped the satellite phone in his right pocket for luck. If Mike had done his job, then the Navy SEAL known to his men as Nero would be standing by, along with his entire platoon, ready to save Trapp’s bacon.

  If he hadn’t, then that same bacon was going to end up extra crispy.

  “Take me to her,” he ordered.

  Trapp released the blade of the knife from the North Korean’s throat, but made a show of his pistol. The threat was plain as day, even if he would have struggled to deliver it in Mandarin.

  You screw me, the weapon said, it’ll be the last thing you do.

  If it came to it, of course, Trapp would dispatch the man with the knife, not the gun. It was messier, but quieter. And the last thing he could afford to do was arouse an entire camp full of enemies.

  He allowed the officer—a lieutenant, if he read the shoulder patches right—to walk a couple of paces ahead of him. It was better that way, the lieutenant providing cover in case they encountered any other travelers out for a midnight stroll.

  But as the man led Trapp to an enormous, stark concrete warehouse, they encountered no one else. They did not, in fact, see another soul until the lieutenant pointed out a guard standing at a nondescript side entrance to the concrete building.

  “They in there,” the man stammered as they sheltered in the darkness cast by a grandiose administrative building. “All of them.”

  What does that mean? Trapp wondered.

  The lieutenant looked as though he wanted to slip away, his work done. Trapp shook his head and smiled, disabusing his new friend of that notion. “How do I get in?”

  The man shook his head, almost as though pleading with his captor. “I don’t know. No have authorization.”

  “Then you better think fast,” Trapp growled, the unfamiliar, sibilant language coming to him more easily now as his brain unlocked long-forgotten language lessons. “Because either you get me in there, or you die.”

  “They kill me either way,” the lieutenant whimpered.

  “Not my problem,” Trapp replied callously. “You screw me, you die right here and now. Understood?”

  The man nodded jerkily, clearly unhappy at his predicament. But what choice did he have? Trapp had him between a rock and a hard place, and he wasn’t letting go. “Okay,” he muttered. “I help. But you hit me. Hard.”

  Trapp frowned. What the hell was the man talking about? And then he understood. Just like the Chinese official a few nights before, the lieutenant wanted him to leave a mark—proof that he’d been assaulted. Hell, he was more than happy to oblige.

  “Fine,” he grunted, gesturing at the enormous warehouse with his pistol. “Now let’s go.”

  They trudged across the hardpacked dirt that separated the two buildings, Trapp a pace behind his captive, his presence an unspoken threat.

  The CIA operative held his breath as they closed on the entrance to the warehouse. He tilted the stolen steel helmet over his forehead in an attempt to disguise his appearance, but in truth there was only so much he could do. The next few seconds would go one of two ways—and he had a suspicion about which of those it would be.

  The lieutenant waved at the sentry standing by the warehouse door. He said something in the unfamiliar, tonal language that sounded like a cousin to the Mandarin that Trapp was reacquainting himself with, without being similar enough to understand.

  Trapp could not comprehend the sentry’s reply, but the tone was clear enough—unsure, laced with distrust. The sentry raised his weapon, jerking it in Trapp’s direction, and called out a challenge.

  Fuck.

  Trapp burst into action. He couldn’t take the chance that the lieutenant would be able to smooth this over. One stray shot from the Type 58, and the whole camp would be swarming with enemy combatants.

  In an instant, Trapp closed the distance between them, ducking under the man’s rifle and ripping it bodily from his arms. The young conscript blanched with terror, and for the second time that night Trapp found himself with the blade of a knife pressed against the man’s throat.

  He fixed the lieutenant with a glare, the man’s movement toward the fallen rifle had not escaped him. “Don’t try it,” he growled. “Translate for me.”

  The officer nodded, his expression displaying the abject terror running through his veins like an open book.

  “You let me in,” Trapp said, “I let you live. Understood?”

  He glanced back at the lieutenant, who relayed the offer in Korean. The sentry knew better than to bargain. He nodded quickly, but said nothing.

  “Tell him if he triggers an alarm, he dies. If he so much as looks at me wrong, he dies. You get that?”

  “Yes,” the lieutenant whispered.

  “Good. What are you waiting for?”

  Again, the officer relayed Trapp’s instructions. Trapp marveled at the speed at which the man spoke. Even allowing for the discreet, hushed tone of voice, it was impossible to make out where one word ended and the next began.

  The sentry nodded energetically for a second time, and Trapp relaxed his grip on the man. He took a pace back, knowing that if he judged the sentry wrong, then the next few seconds would determine not just whether he lived or died, but the fate of his entire country.

  Trapp held his breath as the sentry turned and began to punch a code into a keypad by the door, fingers trembling. At any second, he expected to hear alarms, barking dogs, bo
ots thudding against the ground.

  And then the door clicked open.

  44

  Trapp hadn’t known what to expect upon entering the warehouse. On the outside, the building was stark and brutalist, and even in the darkness it was impossible to miss the streaks of rust that flooded down from its corrugated iron roof, staining the concrete walls.

  Worse still, there could have been anything on the other side of the door. He hadn’t known what he was stumbling into—a situation he had always tried to avoid over the course of years spent in this messy line of work. Trapp preferred to prepare to the nth degree, studying the blueprints of a target building until they were imprinted on his memory as irreversibly as if they were written in indelible ink.

  But that wasn’t always possible. This was one of those times.

  And right now, Eliza Ikeda’s life rested on him leaving his comfort zone and entering the unknown. He crossed the warehouse’s threshold with his pistol drawn, ready to throw himself into battle with yet more unknown enemies.

  As it turned out, all that lay on the other side was an empty hallway.

  Unlike the rest of the camp, the linoleum-floored warehouse was ablaze with electric light, which flooded out the doorway before Trapp quickly kicked it closed behind his small party. He had a feeling that most ordinary soldiers on this base wouldn’t come anywhere near the warehouse without receiving a direct order—and even then they would feel uncomfortable.

  Hell, he felt that way himself.

  “Ask him about cameras,” Trapp said to the lieutenant in a hushed voice, scanning the empty hallway for any sign of a threat.

  “What about them?” the lieutenant said dumbly.

  Trapp shot the man an irritated look. “Are there any? If so—where?”

  He scanned the hallway as the North Korean army officer translated his request. It stank of disinfectant, and the light was almost blinding after spending the last few hours swallowed by the darkness. After leaving—if he got out of this alive—he would need to use the scope in his pocket. His natural night vision would be fried.