Tyler took out the pack of cigarettes he kept for times when he couldn’t dispel the memory. Chugging back his beer while inhaling deeply on the cigarette, he let his head drop onto his chest. All the booze and women in the world couldn’t put the broken soul of an orphan back together. With all the self-control he could muster, he stood up and forced himself to stub out the cigarette. Then he noticed that there was another message on his voicemail. He hit the button.
“Tyler, it’s Patrick. If you haven’t heard, you’re coming to Tokyo. You can thank me with a lap dance when you get here. Just make sure you bring your Nightforce ATACR scope. The only brands they have over here are made in Japan. Haha, get it? Peace out, my brutha.”
Tyler’s face broke into a broad smile. He’d be seeing his old friend again. He’d call him later when the beer he’d chugged wore off a bit. In the meantime, he found the ATACR scope in the silverware tray of his kitchen drawer among the other scopes and silencers he had accumulated to the point that there was no more room for silverware. Just as well, since he practically lived on pizza out of the box and beer from the can or bottle. He put the scope in his go bag along with a favored silencer, since Patrick had intimated that there might be some rough stuff involved, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked Tyler to bring the ATACR. He debated taking a nap and then calling Patrick, but then decided that since he had been given the rest of the week off, he would first enjoy a night of blackjack at the casinos using the stash of chips he’d earned during his six-month deployment.
Having been “escorted” from a casino for counting cards, Tyler knew he was on thin ice, and that one more offense would leave him banned at every blackjack table in town. Still, there was no game in town with better odds, so he chose a smaller joint off the Strip, far away from the one that had blacklisted him, and took a seat. Smiling at the pretty dealer, he made a neat stack of $20 chips in front of him and took stock of the other player at the table, a balding older guy with whiskey breath dressed in a light blue tux that fit him like a sausage casing. The young woman dealt each of them their cards and the game was on. Within two minutes, the other man had lost all his chips except the one he tipped the dealer with and made an unsteady exit from the table. Tyler gave the dealer a wink. “Just you and me, I guess,” he said, and she smiled back. But just then another Asian man, older than Tyler, carried his drink over from another table.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked Tyler and the dealer. Tyler was somewhat disappointed but put on a friendly face. “Not at all,” he said, and moved his chair back to make room.
“I just hope my luck changes over here,” the man said with what sounded like a Chinese accent. After five games it was clear that his luck was back in full force, and he soon had over a thousand dollars’ worth of chips rising like towers in front of him. Tyler had watched to see if he had been counting cards, but the man had barely looked at his or the dealer’s cards during his winning streak.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Tyler said. “Got any tips?”
“Sure. And here’s one for the young lady,” the man said, pushing a hundred-dollar chip to the dealer. “Larry Suh is the name. I’m going to stretch my legs and have a shot at the bar, if you care to join me,” the man said to Tyler. Tyler introduced himself to the man and told the pretty dealer he’d see her later. The dealer lowered her eyes and smiled.
At the bar, the man walked over to the bartender, ordered two shots of Jameson, passed one of them to Tyler, and began a rap about how he was able to “feel” the natural tendency of playing cards to turn a certain way in a certain order. Tyler’s next memory was of being back in his apartment.
CHAPTER 12
JIA headquarters, Tokyo
July 20
Patrick’s smile would have been broader when Tyler entered his office several days later had it not been for the attacks on SDF forces at the Budokan and Yasukuni Shrine. He was midway through his bento lunch of inari sushi.
“Here he is, Lord Commander of the Game of Drones,” Patrick said and went over to his old friend standing in the doorway. Patrick and Tyler Kang had developed almost a choreography of camaraderie over the years whereby their sarcastic repartee hid a deep brotherly love. After recent events, he welcomed an opportunity for lighthearted banter.
“What up, bitch?” Tyler said, as he walked in and dropped his duffel bag on the floor. The two old friends embraced. They had not seen each other in the four years since their ad hoc mission to North Korea had brought down the Kim regime.
“I’m really glad you could come,” Patrick said. “I needed someone top-notch, smart as a whip, and good with a rifle. He wasn’t available, so I called you.” Tyler gave him a mock kick to the groin.
“You can only hope to reach my level someday,” he said.
“I’ll aim low,” Patrick said.
After the mutual ribbing, they sat down.
“You’re late, bro,” Patrick said. “Weren’t you supposed to be here two days ago?”
“Yeah, but I caught a bug the night before I was supposed to leave. Totally wiped me out.” Tyler shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.
“Bimbonic plague?” Patrick asked with a grin.
Tyler shook his head. “I tried calling, didn’t you get my message?” He took out his phone and checked the call history. “Yup, right here.”
Patrick took out his. “Nothing showing up here.”
“Well, mine’s an upgrade, maybe I screwed up somehow. Anyway, here I am.”
“Glad to hear you’ve made a full recovery from your mystery illness,” Patrick said. “How are things otherwise?”
“Not too bad after sitting in a dark room ten hours a day seven thousand miles from my target zone for six months.” He wiped a drop of sweat from his eyes. “Damn, the heat in this city is fucking heinous. And I just came from Vegas.”
“Yeah, it’s the humidity,” Patrick said and reached over to turn up the AC. “Want a beer? I’ve got Bud.”
“I thought you said you had beer.”
Patrick laughed. “Kohai, you’ve been here five minutes and you’re already going native. Alright then, I’ve also got Kirin.”
“Top of my all-time list, Sempai.”
Kohai and Sempai were Japanese terms that indicated relative ranks of people in an organization based on length of service. Patrick and Tyler were roughly the same age, but Patrick had entered the Joint Special Operations Command first. Thus, he was the Sempai and Tyler was the Kohai, but like much of their conversation, they used the words with a faux-mocking tone. They sipped their beers as they chatted. Patrick passed the plastic bento tray of sushi to Tyler.
“You guys still using the MQ-9’s?” Patrick asked.
“Yup, can’t beat the Reaper. Get it?” Tyler said with a mouth full of sushi.
“Yeah, Tyler, it wasn’t all that deep. Or original.”
“And the Hellfires are still hell on wheels for any muj who gets in the way.” He referred to the AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles that packed one hundred pounds of high explosive. “So what’s the deal, Sempai? How come they brought me over for the Olympics?”
“You must have been in transit when the news broke. There’s been three attacks on Olympic sites and the Games haven’t even begun. The first one was at the stadium. Two guys on either side of me got shot during a briefing by a sniper high up in the stands. Whoever it was got through all sorts of high-tech security but spared me for some reason. Disappeared without a trace. Then just the other day the judo venue and a nearby shrine got stormed by these young assholes with assault rifles.”
He handed Tyler photos of the two victims of the sniper shooting in the stadium.
“You were between these guys?” Tyler said, holding the photos from the double assassination at the stadium close to his eyes. “Whoever fired these shots was a pro. Incredible shot placement.”
Pat
rick nodded. “And he used a North Korean Type 58. As did these guys.”
Patrick passed him photos from the attacks on the SDF soldiers at the Budokan and at Yasukuni Shrine. Tyler’s eyes widened.
After giving Tyler a chance to get squared away and rested at his billet in the SDF’s headquarters in Shinjuku, Patrick met him at the range on base. They carried their M4 rifles and one hundred rounds each and checked in with the sergeant in charge. A half hour and only fifty rounds later, their friendly competition had been decided.
“Not to rub it in, Tyler, but you’ve got some work to do. I brought you over as my main man, bro.”
“Jesus, Patrick, I don’t know what to say. I’ve always thought of shooting like riding a bike, but this is piss-poor.”
Patrick waited a minute to let Tyler’s shame work on his sense of professionalism. “I know you’ll have your chops back in time, man.”
Tyler shook his head. “How about we end this for today, it’s just too embarrassing. I promise I’ll be out here every day, though. I won’t let you down, my brutha.”
“Let’s hit the lounge for a quick one. No sense reinforcing any bad habits. And I know you won’t let me down, so don’t even mention that.”
Later that night, Tyler reflected on his sniper career and wondered if he had lost some of his talent to disuse and age. Forty-one years old. He seemed so ancient to himself. He tried to cheer himself out of his crisis of confidence by recalling an assignment he’d been given right after the Rising Tide revolution in North Korea four years earlier. He’d gone back to his old job in the Joint Special Operations Command and been tasked with clandestinely crossing the border into the Balochistan area of Pakistan and taking out the leader of a vicious Haqqani branch of the Taliban. The leader was reputed to be working with a Pakistani general who provided him with direct military and intelligence aid, resulting in the deaths of scores of U.S. soldiers. The hope was that taking out the Taliban leader would also send a message to the Pakistani general, America’s “ally,” that the U.S. was on to his double-dealing and would come looking for him next.
To anyone who knew him well, Tyler came off as cocky, outspoken, and ready for any bar brawl with his fighting skills and utter lack of fear. For the exigencies of the short-term assignment in Afghanistan, though, he cultivated an inner calm that he had gained through meditation techniques his taekwondo teacher had insisted he learn. Thus, from the day he arrived in Afghanistan, his air of serenity earned him the nickname “the human Quaalude.” He kept to himself for the most part, and planned every detail of his illegal one-man mission to take out the Taliban leader. The illegal part never bothered him. His and Patrick’s first sniper trainer, SSGT Eric “Pineapple” Shimoda from Hawaii, gave them a training exercise early in their course which they performed by the book but still got greased in the simulated scenario.
“What did you do wrong?” Pineapple asked.
“Nothing,” Tyler and Patrick insisted. “We did everything you said.”
“You treated the enemy as an equal.”
“That’s what you told us to do…‘Never underestimate.’”
“I didn’t say play by the rules.”
From that day forward, Tyler never played by anyone’s rules but his own.
When intelligence on the Haqqani leader indicated a firm location just across the border, Tyler moved out the next morning at 0200 hours carrying a bolt-action Remington M24 which shot a 7.62-mm 175-grain match bullet and was equipped with a fixed 10-power scope. Once he had found his way by the weak rectangular beam of his taped flashlight to the Zero Line border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, he began a tortoise crawl in the direction of the coordinates he had been given. A sniper has two missions, only one of which is delivering precision fire on selected targets from concealed positions. The second mission is gathering information, and Tyler was also tasked with scoping out the Taliban’s immediate area for any civilians they may have embedded themselves among as human shields.
A mile from the Haqqani encampment, the faint light of false dawn began spreading against the eastern sky. Actual sunrise was an hour away. He was right on time. Moving a mere half yard with each shimmy forward, it would take exactly that hour to get into his final firing position and set up his shot.
When he arrived at the FFP, a small rise a mile from the encampment, he stopped and looked in all directions for sentries. Nothing. He had brought his STA sniper blade, but was glad that this job would require only a rifle. Apparently, the terrorists assumed they were protected by the Zero Line border. Bad assumption.
He filled a canvas bag he had brought with sandy soil and set it on a large, flat rock, then placed the M24 on it and estimated his elevation. Once that was dialed into his scope, he checked the wind. A constant five miles per hour from the east. The mountain air was thin, so aerodynamic drag would be less than at sea level, and he needed to adjust the minute of angle—that is, compensate for the bullet’s downward deviation due to gravity and air resistance. There was also the cold temperature to factor in, since it made the air denser and would cause the bullet to impact lower.
Once all of his ballistic arc preparations were taken care of, he waited. Soon he saw movement in the encampment through his binoculars and switched to the scope. The Haqqani leader was described as having a long beard and wearing a salwar kemeez, or “man-dress” as the GIs called the traditional outfit. Great. That explained everything except anything. Everyone in the encampment fit that description as they began their morning prayers. But there was one man, taller and older than the others, who was immediately brought the morning meal after their prayers. He sat apart from the others and appeared to be leafing through documents of some kind.
Tyler centered the crosshairs just above the man’s head. A feral glint born of total self-assurance came into his eye. He would be going for a center-mass shot, and he needed to account for the bullet’s drop over the mile it would travel. He sat in coiled stillness and monitored his heartbeat. When it was between beats, he squeezed off a single shot. The bullet flew for two seconds and hit the man squarely in the chest, raising a puff of dust as it pierced the fabric of his clothes. The others didn’t react until they saw the man fall backward. Then they began looking in all directions, since the report from the shot was now echoing all around the valley. Tyler pocketed the spent cartridge, the kill brass that had done the job, crawled back to the border, and was met by a patrol of GIs. Radio chatter among the Haqqani encampments confirmed the hit. Not long after, he transferred to the Air Force Command at Creech AFB, lay down his rifle, and gripped a joystick. The money was better, and it was close to one of his favorite places, Las Vegas. He remembered all this in every detail as he lay on his bunk in the SDF officer’s quarters he had been assigned, and as he drifted off to sleep, he vowed to spend the days ahead at the SDF range.
The next morning, he was the first one on the range. He set up shot after shot while recalling Pineapple Shimoda’s watchwords of “99 percent right is 100 percent wrong.” In real life sniping situations there is a great deal of difference between a center-mass hit to the left side of the chest and one to the right. To the right, and the target might live to shoot another day. To the left? Only if the guy was a Vulcan. On this first morning Tyler’s ears burned with embarrassment with each botched shot, knowing that the SDF guys on either side of him were keeping peripheral eyes on his every failure. Two of them who were paired up as shooter and spotter dared to snicker to each other. After two hours, and after the SDF sons of bitches had left, thinking him a total amateur, he started getting an occasional bull’s eye, but his grouping was still all over the place. He was mortified to think that he used to brag that the JSOC brass had once called him an “apex predator” and joked that he should be kept behind a panel reading “Break Glass in Time of War.”
It wasn’t until the afternoon of the following day that his talents as a sniper, long left unhoned,
began to rise from whatever psychosomatic crypt they had been languishing in. Going back to basics, he recalled the shooter’s mantra: BRASS: breathe, relax, aim, slack, squeeze. With each shot getting closer to the bull, time drained from the world, and after his third grouping of six successive bulls, a thrill went up his spine. He looked around triumphantly but in vain for the snickering SDF assholes. No matter. He was back. Then his internal celebration came to a halt: he knew that it was one thing to hit the ten ring on the range, and totally another to do it on the move in the midst of a full-on adrenaline dump.
CHAPTER 13
July 22
After the debacles at the Budokan and Yasukuni Shrine which had resulted in the deaths of all six of the Bonghwajo attackers, three of the remaining six members had been chosen by Mr. Pung to mount an assault on the grounds of Tokyo Tower in hopes of inflicting massive civilian casualties. But despite Pung’s riflery and tactics training sessions in Chiba Prefecture, all three were cut down by off-duty SDF members even before they could even aim their Sig Sauer collapsible machine guns. Thus, only three members of the Bonghwajo advance guard remained before the reinforcements arrived.
These last three were childhood friends and took the collective name “Bong Boys” for their clique after one of them brought back a marijuana pipe from a trip to Vienna with his diplomat father. The three had been meeting in secret at the corpse hotel, trying to come up with a way to advance Mr. Lee’s battle plan without getting killed in the process, as had now happened to nine of their original number. One of them was elected to approach Pung and ask for an emergency meeting with Mr. Lee. His pitch was that there had to be a better way to effect the desired mayhem without all of them dying in the attempt. After all, he reasoned, who would be left to be the young military regents, as Mr. Lee had called them, gallant lads who would pave the way for the restoration of the regime of the Kim family? Mr. Lee agreed to come over and stay the night, and after listening over dinner to the plan the Bong Boys had devised, gave his consent to the use of cutouts, or surrogates, who would be used as willing dupes until the arrival of the second wave of attackers.
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