Nucflash

Table of Contents

 

 

Even if he wasn't yet positive that they were about to be attacked, it was still possible to apply two of the most important rules of combat when ambushed:
Don't stand still
and
Do the unexpected
. Reaching down suddenly, he grabbed Inge's hand and turned her sharply aside. “Come on!”

“Blake!”

She started to run with him. Then she stumbled, and Murdock cursed. She was wearing black high heels that hobbled her as effectively as a ball and chain.

The unexpected move alone, however, had been enough. Ahead, the two utility workers broke into a run.
“Inge! Kommen Sie zurück!”
the woman behind them called out. Turning, Murdock saw the woman pulling something small and black from the depths of her canvas bag . . . a handgun. And the man beside her had a pistol tucked into his waistband, its grip visible beneath the flapping hem of his jacket as he too started running.

The ambush had just been sprung.

 

 

SEAL TEAM SEVEN
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: SPECTER
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: NUCFLASH
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: DIRECT ACTION
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: FIRESTORM
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: BATTLEGROUND
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: DEATHRACE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: PACIFIC SIEGE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: WAR CRY
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: FRONTAL ASSAULT
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: FLASHPOINT
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: TROPICAL TERROR
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: BLOODSTORM
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: DEATHBLOW
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: AMBUSH
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: COUNTERFIRE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: PAYBACK
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: DEADLY FORCE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: FIELD OF FIRE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: ATTACK MODE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: HOSTILE FIRE
SEAL TEAM SEVEN: UNDER SIEGE

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

SEAL TEAM SEVEN: NUCFLASH

 

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

 

First Berkley mass-market edition / August 1995

Second Berkley mass-market edition / October 2011

Copyright © 1995 by The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

ISBN : 978-1-101-55852-2

 

BERKLEY
^®
Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY
^®
is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

 

“Attention, attention. British Airways Flight Twenty-eight from Hong Kong, now arriving Gate Three. . . .”

Pak Chong Yong stepped off the boarding ramp, following the line of his fellow passengers into the waiting lounge in London's Heathrow International Airport. He wore an expensive three-piece suit, with five-hundred-dollar shoes, and carried a leather attaché case for the respectability it afforded him. There was respectability too in his companion, the attractive Korean woman next in line behind him. After almost fifteen hours aboard the 744, Chun Hyon Hee's pink and white business suit was rumpled, but no more so than the clothing of the others aboard Flight 28. It was not yet five in the morning, local time. The sky, visible through the big windows in one wall of the waiting lounge, was still dark, though touched by streaks of a cold, predawn light.

Filing up to the customs gate with the other disembarking passengers, both kept their faces impassive. This would be their first and possibly their most dangerous test. . . .

“Passports, please. You two traveling together?”

“Yes, sir.”

His English was perfect. The passport he surrendered to the customs official at the gate gave his name as Kim Doo Ok, a vice president of marketing for the Seoul-based Daewan International Corporation. His companion's passport listed her as Madam Kim Song Hee, since their control for this operation had felt they would be safer traveling together as husband and wife. Chun, like Pak, was a member of the People's Eighth Special Operations Corps.

“Business or pleasure?”

Pak allowed his face to crease in an unaccustomed smile. “A little of both, sir. I have business for my company . . . but we thought we would combine it with a small vacation.”

“ 'At's the ticket.” After a cursory inspection of their papers, Pak's briefcase, and Chun's carry-on bag, the blue-uniformed official stamped their passports, smiled brightly, and handed them back with a cheerful, “Have a nice stay in England, Mr. and Mrs. Kim!”

“Thank you. We will.”

Beyond the bottleneck of the customs gate they stopped momentarily, until the jostle of people from behind forced the two of them to step aside, suddenly uncertain. Neither of them had ever been to Heathrow before, and the bustle of people was as confusing and as noisy as Hong Kong or Tokyo, and far more alien. Pak felt a shiver of xenophobia, quickly suppressed. His training in covert operations, relentless, grueling, and long, had included outings and maneuvers in several Western cities, and for a time he'd been assigned to Operation Suwi—Watchman—in New York City. He didn't like Western cities, however, and knew he would never get used to them . . . or their mongrel-yapping, contentious, and ill-disciplined people.

The corridors, coldly lit by fluorescent lighting panels overhead, were actually not that crowded. Most of the people milling about beyond the customs gate were waiting for passengers arriving on British Air 28. Their contact ought to be here somewhere. . . .

“Mr. Kim?”

Pak turned, eyes narrowed to hard slits in his round face. The man approaching him from the back of pay phones to the right had a seedy look to him, and his breath stank of too many hours in the airport's bar.

“I'm Kim.”

“Long flight?”

“Not so bad. The service was good anyway.”

“Glad to hear it. Things ain't what they used to be, flying.” The formalities of sign and countersign concluded, the man stuck out his hand. “I'm O'Malley.”

Pak ignored the hand. “Is there someplace more private? I dislike meeting in the open, like this.”

“Ssst!” the man hissed. He glanced back and forth, his too-expressive face revealing his fear. “Keep it down, willya? Ain't seen no Sassmen about, but that don't mean they ain't there. C'mon.”

Pak exchanged a glance with Chun. That was the problem with ops requiring cooperation with
oegugin
. . . the hated foreigners. More often than not, they were poorly trained and poorly disciplined, and they nearly always betrayed more concern for their personal safety than for the completion of the mission.

Pak would be glad when this mission was done and he could return to Pyongyang.

 

“That's O'Malley all right,” the British airport security chief said. “But who're the two gooks?”

Colonel Wentworth glanced up from the television monitor. The Security Office was a clean, close room filled with banks of monitors and a number of security men, but the three of them—Wentworth, the security chief, and the man in the dark suit whose ID had marked him as a special agent with MI5—had this corner of the room to themselves, and no one else was within earshot.

“Their passports are for a Mr. and Mrs. Kim,” Wentworth replied. “But I wouldn't place too much faith in that. Our people are checking with Daewan International now, but I expect they'll check out okay. The opposition's pretty careful about things like that.”

The security chief reached for a white telephone. “So. Shall I call my people in and pick 'em up?”

“Negative,” Wentworth said. He was wearing a headset and could hear the terse back-and-forth reports of the troopers on the ground, a reassuring background murmur of voices and code phrases. “My men are already on it. Let's not spook them with uniforms, okay?”

“Listen, Colonel, O'Malley's a known terr. A damned bloody Provo. If he does somethin' loopy on the concourse, it's me job, see?”

“O'Malley's not a problem,” Wentworth said. “He's not carrying, and his backup stayed outside the security check zone. My guess is he just went in to pick up the two Koreans.”

“Well, your
guess
had damned sure better be a good one.”