Hunt the Dragon (14 page)

If you saw warnings and didn't heed them, you could expect bad things to follow. That was the hard, hard truth of life. Blaming people was a waste of time. You had to learn from your mistakes, take responsibility, and get better and smarter. The cold reality was that the world was becoming increasingly complex, dangerous, and interdependent. When rogue actors behaved badly, they had to be put in their place.

He watched Anders put the phone away and climb the steps. Crocker stepped into his path.

“If we're not going to do something, you don't need me here,” he said, scowling into the setting sun.

“Come on, Crocker,” Anders responded. “You've been around long enough to know how this works. We collect intel, analyze it, make plans, and recommend that the White House takes action. All we can do is hope they make the right decision this time.”

Day by day, Dawkins was growing increasingly anxious. He'd made it through nearly a week of ignoring the pleading look in Sung's eyes when she brought him breakfast in the morning, and had gone about his business without mentioning the note from Dr. Shivan or the phone number he'd given her.

But today was different. For one thing, Sung hadn't arrived at his room at 7 a.m. An older woman with gray streaks in her hair showed up instead. She spoke less English than Sung and offered no explanation for Sung's absence. Instead, she served him a rolled egg omelet with kelp and carrots, and rice cakes, set out his clothes, and escorted him out to the waiting Kwon as though she had been doing this all along.

The second odd thing was that when Dawkins arrived in his workshop, his assistants weren't there. So while he spun the gyro compass to test that it met no resistance from the digital resolver and platform shrouds, he wondered what was going on.

Maybe today was a holiday or some special government function was being held. Or perhaps Chiang-su and Sung had been caught passing another note. Or Dr. Shivan had spilled the beans during interrogation.

Normally, at lunchtime his junior assistant, Yi-Thaek, would roll in a small metal cart bearing hot soup, noodles, and some kind of salad. But today no food arrived. So he sat at the bench sipping rusty-tasting water from a plastic bottle while Kwon waited by the door reading a book in a weathered leather sleeve.

“Food?” he asked as he mimed putting something in his mouth and chewing. “Lunch?”

Kwon looked up at him sullenly, then removed a cell phone from the pouch on his belt and punched in a number.

Dawkins was adjusting the platform shroud when someone rapped on the door and handed Kwon two bowls of soup. The hot broth tasted greasy, and the slices of meat in it were as tough as shoe leather, but at least the soup spread warmth throughout his body, and with warmth came confidence and hope.

He'd almost convinced himself that there was a logical and nonalarming explanation for Sung's absence when a crackly announcement came over the PA system.

He looked at Kwon to try to gauge his reaction. Kwon worked a piece of food out of his teeth, stood, and waved to Dawkins to follow him.

“Where are we going?”

Kwon didn't answer. Dawkins hoped they were on their way back to his room, where he would be given time to fetch his parka and then be escorted outside. But when they reached the end of the hallway, Kwon turned right instead of left, grabbed Dawkins by the elbow, and led him down a short flight of steps and into a darkened room.

When the light came on, he saw that it was an oval amphitheater with about a dozen rows of chairs. The floor was concrete, and thick metal fencing separated the stage area from the seats. Two men entered and set a ten-foot-tall metal pole into a hole in the floor and secured it with bolts. As they worked, people started to file in silently and sit.

He noticed Sung across from him with her eyes cast down. She looked up, met his gaze, and quickly lowered her head. He thought he saw fear in her eyes.

When the space was half full, the same man's voice came over the PA system. This time it took on a scolding tone. Dawkins noticed the eyes of the spectators shifting to him—the lone Westerner. Panic started to worm into his stomach. When he found the courage to glance up, he couldn't see anyone familiar besides Sung across the way and Kwon, who sat next to him, upright and rigid, with his hands folded in his lap.

Martial music played, then a metal door slammed and he heard a man barking orders. Four soldiers in olive uniforms marched in from his left. They stopped at the metal pole, turned with precision, and two men split off to each side and stood at attention with their automatic weapons held in front of them.

Then eight more soldiers marched in. The last two held metal chains that were attached to the wrists of a woman. Her long hair obscured her face, and she wore a plain gray sack-type dress. The soldiers chained the woman's ankles and wrists to the metal pole. Then two of them used scissors to cut apart her dress until it fell off and she was naked. Dawkins still couldn't see her face.

The soldiers left, leaving the chained, exposed woman alone in the pit. Then the man's voice came over the loudspeaker again and began a long, loud harangue that seemed to go on for an hour.

Dawkins noticed that some spectators were visibly shaking and others started to weep. None of them dared make a sound. He started to feel sick. When he tried get up to find a bathroom, Kwon pushed him roughly back into the seat.

The harangue stopped and there was a long silence. He heard a low groan from the crowd and saw that the woman had peed down her trembling legs.

The metal door slid open again and a man wearing a black mask and carrying some kind of backpack emerged. At his side he held what looked like a hose with a nozzle. He stopped ten feet away from the woman, pointed the nozzle at her, and pulled a lever.

With a loud whoosh a bolt of fire shot out of the nozzle, hit the woman, and then subsided. The spectators groaned in unison. The flame had lasted only seconds, but it was enough to singe off all the woman's hair and melt her ears and lips. She screamed in agony as her skin continued to burn. When the smell hit Dawkins's nostrils, he lurched forward from the waist and threw up onto his pants and shoes.

He tried again to stand up, but Kwon slapped him violently on the side of his head. The voice came over the speaker again and harangued the crowd. They responded with groans of agony as the man with the hose released another bolt of fire.

This one hit one of the woman's arms, which burned and snapped off at the shoulder. Dawkins covered his eyes. He couldn't look anymore. The woman wailed like a castrated animal. Was she Chiang-su? Waves of shame and fear passed through his body as he felt a sharp slap across his ear and face, then another.

When he tried to cover his head, Kwon pulled his arms away and punched him in the mouth. One of Dawkins's front teeth gave way. He tasted blood.

The crowd groaned louder this time. He heard another whoosh of flame and passed out.

Nan sat outside the burn unit of the Reston Hospital Center, waiting for Karen and feeling increasingly anxious. She wasn't sure why, because this was a routine checkup, and so far Karen's recovery had gone well. But she sensed that something was wrong. When she saw one of the burn unit nurses leave a room farther down the hallway, she hurried to catch up with her.

“Is Karen responding to treatment?” she asked. “Are there complications?”

“No, Mrs. Dawkins. She's fine. An excellent patient. The doctor is changing the dressing on her ankle. She'll be out in a minute or two.”

“Will there be much scarring?”

“Maybe a little on the outside of her ankle. It can be addressed with plastic surgery, if it's a concern.”

“Thank you.”

The conversation with the nurse hadn't lessened her anxiety. Maybe all the worrying about James and the incident with the fire had frayed her nerves. Thinking that she was about to have a panic attack, she crossed to the water cooler in the waiting area, filled a paper cup, and downed it.

She was about to refill the cup when her cell phone rang. She expected it to be a call from work, but the screen read “Unknown.”

The voice on the other end asked, “Bird?”

“Yes. Who is this?” No one called her Bird except for James and her stepsister, who she hadn't spoken to in months.

“I'm calling in regard to Mr. James Dawkins.” It was a man's voice with an Asian accent.

“Oh, oh…Yes! He's my husband.”

“Mrs. Dawkins, I work for an antigovernment organization called the North Korean Strategy Center based in Seoul, South Korea.”

“Are you with my husband? Is that where he is now?” Nan asked.

“I am not with Mr. Dawkins. I'm sorry. He's at a location called Ung-do. He's been held prisoner there by the North Korean government.”

A dozen questions crowded her brain. “North Korea? Do you know why? Is he being treated well and in good health?”

“He is alive. Unfortunately, I have very few details. He's living in an underground complex and is being forced to work on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.”

“Oh…What is the name of his location again?”

“Ung-do. It's an island.”

A
fter days
of hanging around San Diego and growing increasingly frustrated, Crocker was summoned to NAB headquarters again. As he sat texting Cyndi, Captain Sutter arrived, all spit and polish, with every Kentucky-bred hair in place. The same group of analysts that had been meeting all week took their places—minus the FBI cyber expert and the analyst from the NK desk. Dina Brooke had a lizard tattooed on the back of her wrist and something that looked like computer code on her upper arm.

What it meant, he had no clue. Seeing the document stamped
TOP SECRET
that she set in front of him and the burn bag by the door, his mood brightened. Looked like they were finally getting down to business.

Sutter dove in, explaining that SOCOM—Special Operations Command—had been considering three military options for dealing with North Korean aggression:

1. A cruise missile attack launched from U.S. warships stationed in the South China Sea.
   
2. A laser-guided high-altitude aerial bombing with special bunker-busting bombs.
   
3. A small amphibious landing by a SEAL demolition team.
   

“But given recent developments, options one and two have been shelved,” Sutter explained.

“What recent developments?” asked Crocker.

“We learned last night that a missing U.S. advanced missile guidance engineer was kidnapped by the DPRK and is being forced to work on their nuclear missile program.”

“How long has he been held?” Crocker asked.

“About a month,” Anders answered. “The DPRK kidnapped at least one other missile engineer, an Indian gentleman, who we believe was killed recently. There might be others.”

“The blackouts, the counterfeit currency, now the kidnapped engineers…I knew they were up to something.”

“Analysts at CIA believe that these acts are all part of a campaign initiated by Kim Jong-un,” Anders explained. “His endgame isn't clear. Maybe some form of nuclear blackmail, or an attempt to lure the United States and China into military conflict that he can take advantage of.”

Crocker's blood pressure had started to spike. He said, “We've got to respond decisively. I hope that's why we're here.”

“DPRK's missile tech operation is run out of the Ung-do complex,” Anders continued. “We believe it's the same place where our guidance engineer is being held.”

He didn't explain who that important piece of information had come from—specifically, an FBI agent who had received a call from the engineer's wife, who had been contacted by a DPRK dissident, who got the information from a woman working in the Ung-do complex.

“We're prioritizing option three,” Sutter announced. “It's yours, Crocker. We need you to lead the planning and assemble a team.”

“What size team are we talking about?” he asked, getting fired up.

“Small,” Sutter answered. “Probably no more than four men, but totally contingent on how you infil.”

He left the infil part dangling for the time being. “Why only four?”

“Because we want to keep the footprint as small as possible,” replied Anders. “Optimally, we'd like the mission to have no U.S. footprint at all. But that's probably outside the realm of possibility, because the South Koreans want no part of this.”

Crocker deduced from his answer that they'd already been asked and had declined.

“Why's that?” he asked.

“One, they say they're committed to a political program of normalizing relations with North Korea. And, two, they're obviously worried about military repercussions, though they won't admit that. Suffice it to say, the DPRK has an army of over a million, a lot of them are deployed within a hundred miles of Seoul, and they're fucking crazy.”

“Got it.”

Anders rubbed his square chin. “There's several other aspects of this to consider,” he stated. “One is that Min has offered to be part of the mission.”

“Min, the defector?” Sutter asked. “Are we sure that's wise? Can we trust him?”

Anders turned to Brooke, who answered, “Based on everything we know, yes. The South Koreans are extremely thorough in the way they vet DPRK defectors.”

“But loyalties in that part of the world are tricky, so there's always a chance, correct?” Sutter asked.

“I would characterize it as slight probability,” hedged Anders.

Crocker spoke up. “Whatever the odds, it means we could be screwed the moment we launch.”

“That's one way to put it,” Anders replied. “Nevertheless, Min has given us a detailed picture of the layout, entrance and egress points, and resources on the island. All of which has been matched against drawings that Choi smuggled out.”

“Sat and electronic surveillance?” Crocker asked.

“The full three-sixty package of surveillance assets have been deployed, as well as a complete target profile amalgamated from other DPRK defectors.”

“When was the last time Min was physically on the island?” Crocker asked.

“Roughly a year ago,” Anders answered.

“How sure are we that the presses, missile research program, and U.S. engineer are still there?”

“In terms of the first two, ninety-nine percent. Obviously, we can't see them from the air, but the heat signatures around the entrance continue to be strong. Obviously, the engineer is easier to move, so his location is very difficult to confirm.”

“He have a name?” asked Crocker.

“James Dawkins,” Dina Brooke answered, reaching into a folder and producing a photo of the engineer, which she handed to Crocker.

Crocker had been in this business long enough to know he had to discount all CIA odds by at least twenty percent. Which meant that there was a better than even chance that the presses and missile program were still on Ung-do and operational. In terms of the engineer, it was anybody's guess.

“How well fortified is the facility and how far underground?” Crocker asked.

“You'll find all that detail in the document in front of you. Page three.”

“Thanks.” He jotted down some facts in his notebook: reinforced concrete walls, bomb-resistant roof, target approximately thirty meters underground.

“What are we looking at in terms of possible exposure to radiation?”

Brooke jumped in. “It's a missile research facility that according to what we know is devoted to two important tasks, reducing the size of the warheads and increasing the accuracy of their missile guidance systems. We can't confirm the presence of active nuclear material.”

“Nothing has been picked up by airborne monitoring,” added Anders.

“But we don't know for sure?”

“No.”

“I'm assuming that we'll be taking out the complex with explosives,” Crocker said.

“Correct. And you'll probably have to carry the material in yourself. Because of the high level of local security, we don't think it's possible to drop anything on the island or immediate vicinity.”

Sutter spoke up. “DARPA has developed something that you'll want to get your hands on. It's currently the most powerful nonnuclear explosive in existence. Insensitive to shock like TNT, and has twenty-five percent more explosive power than HMX.”

“What's it called?”

“CL-20. Like HMX, it has an extremely fast explosive velocity.”

“Suarez know about it?” Crocker asked, referring to Black Cell's explosives expert.

“I believe so. Yes.”

“Then I want him included,” Crocker concluded. “We have anyone on the teams who speaks Korean?”

“There's a sniper on Team Three named Sam Lee,” Sutter reported. “Strong, smart kid. Good reputation. He's a native speaker.”

“I want to meet him this afternoon.”

“Done.

Dawkins awoke seated in a chair in his room. He couldn't tell if he was dreaming or what he saw was real. Kwon was holding his mouth open with one hand and a flashlight in the other, as a man with a very thin face and bad breath used a dental instrument to examine his teeth.

The man muttered something and nodded, and Dawkins drifted off.

Next thing he remembered was Kwon helping him into bed. The box of videos, VCR, and TV were gone. So were his pens and notebooks. With his tongue he felt the empty space where his tooth had been.

Sung emerged from the bathroom carrying a wet washcloth. When he sat up and blinked, the older woman was in her place instead.

“Where's Sung?” he asked in a weak voice.

Kwon barked something in Korean and left.

Dawkins's body felt like it was burning. Someone placed a cool washcloth on his forehead. He looked up and thought he saw Sung.

“Sung, I'm so sorry.”

He heard someone humming the lullaby she had sung to him about the mother going out to look for food for her infant son. But when he focused on the woman's face, it didn't belong to Sung, and her lips weren't moving.

Crocker was sitting in his rental car in the Doheny State Beach parking lot, just south of Dana Point, reviewing the mental checklist in his head, when a guy who met Sam's description pulled up in a late-model pickup and got out. He strode like an athlete and stood about six two, with a sidewall haircut and a SEAL Trident tattooed on his shoulder. His size and large nose were the only clues that he wasn't a hundred percent Korean.

“Sam?”

He smiled. “Warrant Officer Crocker.”

“Thanks for coming. You ready to run?”

Crocker led the way across the sand, down past San Clemente to San Onofre, sweet ocean air in his face, the sun shining over his shoulder, enjoying the pulse of movement, freedom, and space. Surfers to their right, sunbathers on their left. Nature at full astonishment. He didn't even think of stopping to buy a bottle of water until they reached Camp Pendleton South, by which time they had covered more than twenty miles.

Sam had kept stride the whole way. When he finally stopped, Crocker slapped him on the back.

“You okay?”

“Yes, sir. I was warned about you. We running back?”

“Let's talk first.”

They stretched their legs on a dune looking out over the ocean and Sam started telling him about his family. Both mother and stepfather were immigrants from poor farming communities in South Korea. At nineteen his stepdad got a job as a cook and mechanic with the U.S. Navy. A friendly commander sponsored his immigration to the States. He arrived in North Carolina and worked in the retired commander's nursery business. Just when he started to think of moving on, he met his former wife, Sam's mother, rifling through a trash bin outside a Winston-Salem supermarket. He was twenty-six and gainfully employed. She had just turned twenty-eight, was a single mother, homeless, and completely broke.

“He took us in that day and we've been together since,” Sam said. “My parents just celebrated their twentieth anniversary. They also gave me a younger brother and sister.”

Crocker tried to focus, but he kept returning to the long checklist in his head—comms, weapons, medical kits, et cetera. “Tell me about your father,” he said, reminding himself that his men would be arriving in an hour and his first task would be to talk to Suarez about the CL-20.

“Supersolid; never complains. My mother is my inspiration. She started working in rice paddies at the age of five, where she had to slice leeches off her leg with a machete. At sixteen she was discovered one night making out in the backseat of a rich boy's car, which caused her to be shunned by her family and kicked out of school.”

Crocker flashed back to his own high school in Massachusetts and one of several times he'd been expelled—for punching the captain of the football team and breaking his nose.

“The only way she could support herself was by working as a prostitute at a nearby U.S. Navy base. At eighteen she met a young American ensign who fell in love with her and took her back home with him to Pensacola. That's where they married and where I was born. But my dad's parents shunned their Korean daughter-in-law, and my mother had big dreams. She wanted to go to college, so she started her own business, which was selling cosmetics door-to-door.

“My father imagined a more traditional role for her. They fought and separated. She met another man, who moved us up to Winston-Salem and then abandoned us. Today she's a successful businesswoman with a college degree and a dozen stores throughout Southern California. Next year she's planning on running for mayor of Newport Beach.”

“Sounds like an amazing lady,” Crocker said.

“Thanks.”

“I'd like to meet them when we get back.”

“Absolutely, chief. Where are we going?”

“The mission is top secret. I'll tell you later. After we run back to our vehicles, grab your gear and meet me at NAB Coronado. Be there at 2100.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nan sat in the bedroom of her temporary apartment Google-mapping the island of Ung-do, North Korea. A rough gray oval surrounded by light blue appeared on the screen of her laptop. Shifting to “Earth” mode, she saw the shape turn green and the water surrounding it dark blue. When she zoomed in closer, a few concrete structures became visible in the middle of the island.

She wondered if James was living in one of them and what he was doing. For a few seconds she felt close to him, as though they were communicating telepathically and focusing on him had caused him to think of her.

The FBI agents she'd met that afternoon had told her that the United States was taking steps to get her husband back. But they wouldn't specify what that meant, nor would they give her a timetable. She'd heard about American prisoners held in captivity in the jungles of South America for a dozen or more years before a rescue or exchange, or until the guerrillas holding them got tired of doing so and let them go.