Rings of Fire

by Gregory Shepherd

  “It’s a pretty simple arrangement,” Megumi said as they jogged. For a woman who smoked as much as she did, Megumi was in more than decent shape. She panted slightly but was fully able to carry on a conversation. “We’ll each take one of the gates.”

  “Got it,” Kirsten said. As they approached the Blue Sluice Gate, they saw a young man in a track suit stretching on the grass next to a gym bag. He didn’t acknowledge them as they got closer until they were directly in front of him. They all surreptitiously looked around at the few runners and homeless people on the footpath. It was nearing noon, and it became clear why the young man wanted to start early. The nearby office buildings would be clearing out in a short while for lunch, and he wanted a high body count.

  Megumi made a show of being surprised at the young man’s presence. “Oh, I didn’t know you jogged here too!”

  Casanova smiled dyspeptically as he looked at Kirsten. Megumi spoke again. “This is my very good friend Amira I told you about,” she said. Kirsten/Amira smiled nervously and said, “Nice to meet you,” in English. Casanova continued to stare at Kirsten suspiciously before finally inviting them to sit down on the grass. He brought the gym bag in front of him. Opening it, he took out a box of cookies that he offered to them. After they had nibbled on the cookies, he took out three bricklike objects wrapped like presents.

  “I have omiyage presents, so please…” he said in English, handing them each one of the bricks. Then he continued in a low voice. “Climb to top of gates. Megumi, you take number one, and Amira, take two. I will take three,” and he pointed to the closest of the three gates. “I am here today one hour, and also yesterday. Nobody watching.” He then explained that once up on the platform of the Sluice, it was a simple matter of climbing as quickly as they could up the ladder grips that ran along the sides of the three gates, packing the C4 bricks into the hinges that ran along the tops of the gates, and coming back down again. The bombs were remote-controlled, he said, indicating his cell phone.

  A quarter mile on the other side of the Sluice from where Kirsten and Megumi had jogged in, Patrick sat in the grass next to a bicycle with a pair of binoculars. He had been intently observing the avian life of the riverbank, a not uncommon pastime, and occasionally he had followed a “bird” as it flew in the direction of the Blue Sluice. As he saw Kirsten, Megumi, and Casanova get up with the bombs in their hands, he looked around the area one more time. From what Bozu had told him, there might be more of the young Bonghwajo involved in the attack on the Sluice, but Kirsten, Megumi, and Casanova looked to be the entire crew. He set down the binoculars, turned his back on the Sluice, and removed his Glock from the saddlebag of the bike and racked the slide to feed a round into the chamber. As he turned back to face the Sluice with the gun in his waistband with the safety on, he saw Kirsten reaching down to “scratch” her ankle, making sure that her Colt Mustang was good to go. It was also Patrick’s signal. He looked around one more time to be sure there were no other Bonghwajo in the area and began pedaling toward the Sluice.

  On Casanova’s go, Megumi and Kirsten followed him up the stairs of the concrete landing below the water barriers, and they all walked quickly to the rungs protruding from the concrete stanchions. Once on top of their respective gates, the three went directly to the large metal hinges that controlled the up and down motion of the gates, all of which were firmly closed against the enormous volume of water that had accumulated in the river as a result of the rainy season’s twenty-three days of steady precipitation. Kirsten looked around nervously for Patrick. The plan was to go along with Casanova and Megumi until it was clear that reinforcements would not be coming and then for her and/or Patrick to shoot them both. Now with a brick of C4 in her hand, her breathing went into panic mode as she searched the area for Patrick, who had not yet arrived on the scene. Suddenly, Megumi called out.

  “Wait!” she shouted to Casanova. “There’s a playground right over there.” She pointed from her perch atop her gate at Meisho Kindergarten, where children were playing less than a few hundred yards away. The school had not been visible from the ground.

  “Keep going,” Casanova shouted.

  “But you said it would only be government buildings,” Megumi called back. With both of them arguing back and forth, Kirsten surreptitiously dropped her brick into the river and climbed back down.

  “It’s too late,” Casanova yelled, and he took out his cellphone/detonator. “Get off now,” he screamed to Megumi and jumped the remaining eight feet off his gate onto the concrete landing. He began running toward the riverbank next to the Sluice.

  “You can’t just kill those children!” Megumi shouted. She climbed back to the hinge where she had left her C4, ripped it out of the hinge casing, and threw it into the river. Casanova swore and looked down at his phone. Before he could trigger a detonation, Kirsten grabbed her Colt from her ankle holster. Casanova looked over at her just as she was bringing the gun up. He jumped to avoid being hit and fell off the concrete, landing onto the ground ten feet below, where he lay unmoving. Megumi looked down at Kirsten in shock but then began climbing the rungs to the top of Casanova’s gate to retrieve the block of C4 he had left on top. “Come down, Megumi!” Kirsten shouted, but Megumi continued climbing. Patrick arrived just as Megumi reached the top of the gate. “Where’s Casanova?” he shouted to Kirsten, but she was too involved in what Megumi was doing to even hear him.

  As Megumi was about to throw the other block of plastic explosive into the river, Casanova lifted his head up off the ground, saw what she was trying to do, and pressed the screen of his phone. Immediately the block of C4 exploded in Megumi’s hand, leaving only a flash of light where she had been standing. The gate became dislodged from its tracks, allowing the swollen Arakawa River to pour through the gap, but the other two gates held firmly against the torrent. Water rose twenty feet up the bank and then leveled off, sparing Meisho Kindergarten and most of the other buildings above the riverbank. Kirsten and Patrick swam ashore and turned to look at where Casanova had been lying, but the area was now completely inundated.

  CHAPTER 42

  American embassy

  The after-action review by the combined security command quickly went from bad to worse. Hayashida had sent hundreds of JIA agents to the Ogouchi Dam, but they found nothing. It was obvious that he and Proctor had discussed the situation before Patrick had arrived.

  “Featherstone, I have to ask,” Proctor began. “For some reason, I can’t get out of my head the possibility that there never was a threat to the Ogouchi Dam. Meanwhile, your heroics at the Blue Sluice Gate get front-page coverage. It was as if someone wanted the JIA out of the way. After all, no terrorists were anywhere to be found except at the Sluice.”

  Patrick’s mouth dropped. “You think I made up the threat to the Dam in order to hog the glory at the Sluice?”

  “Nothing like that, Mister Featherstone,” said Hayashida, “but what Mister Proctor and I were wondering was if you have some kind of inside source. I mean, how did you know there would be an attack on the Blue Sluice Gate?”

  Patrick was ready with an answer. “I found a fragment of a license plate, Mister Hayashida. You know, like the one from the Yoyogi Gymnasium you kept from me?” Hayashida’s face fell, and he glared at Kaga. Kaga glared back.

  Patrick continued. “And Proctor, you don’t know enough about anything here to even be opening your mouth, so how about keeping it shut for a change?”

  Predictably, Proctor didn’t. “Hayashida and I want you to step down. There’s just too many cooks in all this, and we want you to resign.”

  Intense indignation blazed in Patrick’s gut, and he turned from side to side in disbelief at what Hayashida and Proctor had just suggested. Then he saw Kaga. His jaw was set, and he was ever so slightly shaking his head, telling Patrick not to even think of quitting. It was all Patrick needed. He stilled his breathing to regain his composure and turned
to Proctor and Hayashida.

  “My contract is ironclad, and there’s no way I’m going to step down, especially if you two are proposing it. But from now on you can count on one thing: I’m on my own. And so are you.”

  He turned on his heel and made for the door. He hesitated briefly when he heard footsteps right behind him. He turned and saw it was Kaga. Together, they began to exit the room.

  Hayashida called after Kaga. “I knew you weren’t a loyal Japanese.”

  Kaga turned back. “It’s because I’m a loyal Japanese that I’m no longer working for you. I resign.”

  Patrick laughed as they continued out the door. “And I hereby hire him.”

  CHAPTER 43

  President Dillard demanded from his chief of staff a rare fifteen minutes alone prior to his meeting with two senators and a congressman from his own party several hours before his departure for the Olympics. A naturally gregarious man who derived energy from crowds, especially crowds of adoring supporters, he had been feeling uncharacteristically spent and weary lately, and a gnawing part of his psyche had been whispering in his ear that he really wouldn’t mind all that much if he weren’t reelected in November. But then the loathsome face of his opponent, Jon Friel, crowded out all else, especially Friel’s condescending smirk during the first of their televised debates.

  Unlike his opponent in the last election, who was a genuinely good man, if politically misguided, Friel had a Machiavellian dark side that he tried to mask under a persona of “man of the people,” which the media ate up. It killed Dillard to think that Friel had fooled so many people, when actually he was the most duplicitous, underhanded son of a bitch in politics with the exception of Evan Dillard himself. Friel had been on the attack in recent weeks, and Dillard feared he was being beaten at his own game of nonstop blitzkrieg. The media had used Friel’s embrace of the China Solution to marginalize Dillard as a “racist isolationist” out of touch with reality in Asia. And Dillard feared that this morning’s meeting with party members was all about caving. He stubbed out his cigarette with an envious look at the antlike tourists on Pennsylvania Avenue and wished he could be as blissfully carefree as they were. He pushed the button on the intercom on the desk.

  “Send them in, Maddie.”

  In walked the Senate majority leader and the whips from the House and the Senate. The grave look on Senator Carl Davis’s face told Dillard all he needed to know about the next excruciating twenty minutes. After they had all sat down in wing chairs in front of the Resolute Desk, Davis took it upon himself to begin the proceedings.

  “Mister President, all of us here in this room today are up for reelection in November. And as you’ve no doubt seen in this morning’s Post, Friel has pulled one point ahead in the presidential race.” Actually, Dillard had been too afraid to look at the Post that morning, so Davis’s news came as a gut punch. Davis continued.

  “The three of us have been discussing party strategy for November, along with analysis of why Friel’s numbers have been going up so dramatically, and it seems clear to us that his improvement is largely due to his embrace of the China Solution. People are just sick and tired of terrorism, plain and simple.”

  Dillard began nodding halfway through Davis’s last sentence, and he held up his hand as Davis finished it. “I know where you’re going with this, Carl, and part of me agrees with what must be your conclusion as to the way forward. I can’t say I totally agree with the analysis that Friel’s numbers are the result of his embrace of the China Solution. There are several factors going into this home stretch that are working against us, including the downturn on Wall Street. But I’ll grant you that at least some of his uptick is due to the China and North Korea thing. What I told the vice president last night is what I’ll tell you all now. He and I are going to the Olympics tonight, and we’re hoping that our appearance there will strengthen all of our positions in the polls for November….”

  As he got to the last point, the three members of Congress shifted in their seats almost in choreographed fashion. “Mister President, I’ll be candid,” Davis said before Dillard could start again. “We’re all tanking. That’s the only word that comes to mind that fully captures the situation. We lost the House in the midterms, and if things go as the polls are indicating, we’ll not only lose the Senate but the White House too. We need a total reversal in the polls, and fast. I don’t think an appearance by you and Paul at the Olympics is going to cut it. Now, forgive my presumptuousness, but I commissioned a national poll by Pew Research last night, with the main question being, ‘Would accepting the China Solution affect your vote?’ According to their results, which I just got before coming over, ten percent of likely voters would change their votes in our favor. Ten percent, Mister President.”

  “I understand the dilemma we all face, Carl,” Dillard said with weary impatience. “And as I was about to say, when Coppinger and I appear at the Olympics, if there’s no immediate uptick in our polls, I’m not going to hang any of us out to dry. But I do want to wait till then.”

  “And at that time if there’s no improvement, you’ll accept the China Solution?” Davis pressed.

  Dillard nodded. “You have my promise. I’ll do everything in my power to prevent Jon Friel from inflicting himself on this country.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Very few people actually choose to travel to North Korea even once, let alone twice, but when the love of your life is languishing in a gulag just north of the DMZ, one sets aside common sense and goes searching. That is the position Patrick found himself in before the Rising Tide revolution of 2017, when Yumi Takara was abducted from a beach on Sado Island and spirited away to Pyongyang on the orders of Comrade Moon.

  Patrick’s first trip across the border was as a non-official-cover CIA operative, disguised as a Canadian art dealer, with an ostensible mission of finding and, if necessary, killing Tyler Kang, who had mock-defected to North Korea but forgot to tell his people back home about the “mock” part. But Patrick’s old comrade in arms had a whole deck of wild cards up his sleeve, one of which was to assassinate Kim Jong-un, which came to naught with the Rising Tide revolution.

  Patrick’s second, more personal trip to the North was to find and rescue Yumi, and to that end, he wound up flying over the DMZ in a Griffin 1-A flying suit straight out of Tesla Labs. Once on the other side, he established contact with Nahm Myung-dae, leader of the Rising Tide insurgent movement that toppled the regime, and now the president of North Korea. But Nahm’s ability to lead an insurgency did not translate into leading a nation, and his disastrous agricultural policies had led to widespread food shortages rivaling those of the Kim years. The ineptness of his leadership had also spawned several opposition groups who yearned for the stability of the Kim dynasty, much like Russians who to this day hearken back to the days of Stalin. The most visible of the opposition groups was also the newest: Chosun Restoration.

  Into the breach had stepped China, but Nahm vehemently rejected the China Solution, fearing that the PRC would promptly bring back the Kim family. Once back in power, the Kims would wipe Rising Tide from the face of the earth. On the other hand, Nahm faced a rebellion much like the one he had led four years earlier if he couldn’t find a way to improve the economy and soon. Then came news of an unexpected development, one that involved an old friend from the Rising Tide revolution, a foreigner who spoke fluent Korean. His secretary placed the call. A minute later, the foreigner answered.

  “Nahm Myung-dae, is it really you?”

  “Yes, Patrick, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “It’s good to hear from you too.” He waited for Nahm to get to the point of his call. It certainly wasn’t to exchange pleasantries.

  “Patrick, I have a very important favor to ask.”

  “Of course. You know I’d help you in any way I can.”

  There was a time gap on the other end of the line as Nahm
searched for the right words.

  “I’m sorry to keep you from your duties, Patrick, but I’m wondering about the young boy that you and Yumi took for adoption.”

  Patrick’s heart froze. What on earth could be coming next? He waited for Nahm to continue.

  “Patrick, can you please let me know if the boy has a birthmark on his neck?”

  Patrick wrestled momentarily with the urge to say no, politely end the call, and hang up. Instead, he replied. “Yes. On the left side.”

  Nahm sighed before continuing. “As I’m sure you know, things have been tough ever since the Chinese cut off aid.” Patrick didn’t bring up the added factor that Nahm’s policies were also a major factor in the situation in North Korea, and he let his old comrade in arms continue.

  “What we need for the long term is something I’ve only heard rumors about, but which could not only feed the people, but put them to work for decades. Do you know what ‘rare earth’ is?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “I just recently learned exactly what it is myself, and why it’s so valuable. It could be the start of a whole new economy over here, independent of foreign aid. I was reading an online report this morning, and it said that rare earth elements are typically not found in one place in high concentrations.” Nahm paused before continuing.

  “Patrick, someone in this country has discovered the world’s biggest deposit of it in one place. It’s worth trillions of dollars. Trillions.”

  “So have you started mining it?” Patrick asked.

  “We will as soon as we find it.”