Nucflash (9 page)

 

Chun Hyon Hee gently eased aside the curtain on the third-floor window, keeping well back from the opening as she peered out into the bright daylight beyond. From here, she could see the police barricades, and beyond that the waiting, watching crowds of curious onlookers, the news media, the gawkers.

It was a pity, really. The location of this safe house, which originally had been a place for Provos on the run from the British to lie low, had been ideal. The brownstone building housing the Waterfront Rise flats fronted on Northport Street, just across from the main entrance to the BGA Consortium's Middlebrough port facility. From the third-floor front balcony, Chun had a splendid view of the entire expanse of the shipyard, from the storehouses and rail yards behind the fence, to the wharfs, piers, and shiploading machinery on the waterfront, to the harbor itself and the dozens of ships moored there, from lighters and small craft to mammoth oil tankers. To the right, beyond the Port Authority buildings at the south end of town, an enormous tank farm rose behind the skyline clutter of cranes and cargo gantries.

Middlebrough had long been an industrial center in this part of England, but in recent years the influx of oil from the North Sea fields had transformed parts of the port into an important petroleum distribution center. Pipelines from the important Ekofisk and Bouddica oil and gas complexes midway between England and the southern tip of Norway snaked across 150 miles of sea bottom to rise onto the oil-scummed beach and enter the Middlebrough refinery complex. The facility was known as Teeside, even though the town properly of that name lay some distance inland, up the Tees River.

Oil. Even now, twenty years and more after the embargoes and price hikes that had sent convulsions throughout the West, oil was the key to economic power in the industrialized world. And where one held economic power, one held political power as well. That was what Operation Saebyok was all about—power . . . political power enough to bring the West to its knees.

That idiot O'Malley had jeopardized everything,
everything.
If he hadn't brought those
maech'unbu
back to the safe house . . .

Carefully, Chun released the curtain and stepped away from the window. Sooner or later the enemy was certain to assault the safe house, though she thought it likely that they would wait until night, when the defenders were tired and their reactions were slowed. In a way, Chun was looking forward to the showdown, even though it would mean that she, personally, could no longer take part in Saebyok. The operation would continue, of course, even after she was dead. She took comfort—and great pride—in that simple fact.

Pak Chong Yong had escaped out the back of the safe house, moments after the prostitute had fled screaming out the front. Pak was the real key to Saebyok. The two of them both had the same training, the same knowledge, so that one could act as backup for the other should anything go wrong, but from the beginning, this had been Pak's operation, Pak's concept. Besides, Pak had been part of the original development team, and he knew the theory and the operation of the Device far better than did Chun.

It was good that he had been able to escape.

Of course, Pak had ordered her to escape with him, but she, with her usual practicality and sensibility, had pointed out that one of them had to stay behind and ensure that all of the records hidden at the site were destroyed, and that the German and Irish members of the unit would fight. Neither she nor Pak trusted their Western accomplices. The level of discipline, dedication, and obedience to orders among the Provos was appalling; they tended to be lazy, cowardly, and slow. The Germans among them were only slightly better. They were totally dedicated to the mission—especially the women, surprisingly enough to Chun—but always when given an order, it seemed they wanted to know
why.

Reaching out, she drew the curtain back once more, staring hard past the buildings across the street at the waterfront and dockyard facilities beyond. Pak was out there somewhere. He should have been able to make it clear to the docks before the police barricades had been erected. The unit kept a small boat there, just for such emergencies as this. With luck, Pak was out to sea and halfway back to the primary base by now.

“Haeng'un ul pimnida,
” she murmured, wishing him luck. She'd slept with him a number of times, at first out of socialist duty since the two of them were expected to look and act like husband and wife . . . but lately she'd developed a genuine fondness for him. Pak Chong Yong had the dedication necessary to see this operation through to its glorious end. She thought she was probably in love with him.
“Haeng'un ul pimnida, na e aein.”

 

“We're not going to wait until tonight to take the bastards out,” Colonel Wentworth said. An architect's blueprints were unrolled on the top of the folding card table before him. “We're going to hit them now.”

“What?” Sergeant Major Andrew Dunn said in mock surprise. “In broad daylight?”

“Maybe we should go put our makeup on,” Trooper Frank Mclntyre put in. “Just for the telly cameras, you know.”

“Hey, Roselli,” Trooper George A. Cartwright said, laughing. “How do you SEALs like being on TV?”

“It's happened,” Roselli said. He was thinking about the highly publicized Navy-Marine landing in Somalia several years back, when a joint SEAL/Marine Recon team had hit the beach smack dab in the middle of a waiting pack of journalists and cameramen, who'd been tipped off by someone in the high command. The result had been a cluster fuck if ever there'd been one, with the team taking up fighting positions squarely under the white glare of the film crew's lights. “We don't like it, but it's happened.”

Roselli and the other three SEALs of the SAS exchange training group were standing inside the large tent that had been set up as Colonel Wentworth's operational field HQ, along with twelve SAS men in full battle garb—black Nomex coveralls, bulletproof vests, and combat harness. In one corner in the back, half-hidden in the shadows, a young, yellow-haired woman wearing camouflage Army BDUs several sizes too big for her and white bandages on her face and hands was talking quietly with a female British Army sergeant, who was questioning her and making notations on a large clipboard.

“What's the rush, anyway, Colonel?” Sergeant Vince Randolph wanted to know.

“Major Dowling-Smythe is at the scene now with a couple of observers,” Wentworth said. He pulled a large and highly detailed street map out from under the blueprints and smoothed it out on the tabletop. “They have an infrared scope set up in this Port Authority office building on the top floor . . . right here. The major says there's a great deal of heat coming from the target's fourth floor.” He stopped and glanced at Roselli. “That's the
fifth
floor to you boys from the colonies.”

“Leave it to the Yanks t' get it wrong,” Randolph said, and the others chuckled, including the four SEALs.

“What kind of heat?” Dunn wanted to know. “A stove?”

“Probably an open flame,” Wentworth said. “Major Dowling-Smythe reports smoke coming from the windows as well. It's our guess that the terrs are busily burning the evidence.

“And that's why the minister wants us to go in quickly. If we can catch them now, before they've had a chance to dispose of the evidence of their dirty work, the goodies might give us a handle on the whole terrorist gang.”

“So,” Major Fred Billingsly, the colonel's chief aide, said as he looked up from the map. “No hostages this time?”

“Not that we know of . . . unless you want to count those records. I can't stress that part of the op enough, gentlemen. We suspect that this safe house was a storage facility—a library, if you will—for a very great deal of the gang's paperwork. There will be lists of contacts and informants, pay records, expense sheets, sources of money from overseas, lists of provisioners and gunsmiths and sources of weapons and explosives, rosters of active members, maybe even lists of sleepers they have hidden away in sensitive positions in the government or elsewhere.”

“Hell,” Roselli said. “Sounds like even the tangos can't escape the terror of bureaucracy anymore.” The others laughed.

“Just so,” Wentworth said. “If we're very lucky, there will be notes kept during their planning meetings, maybe write-ups or reports or schedules that will describe their current operations. We know this group has been damned active, both in uniting the RAF and the active remnants of the Provos into something new, something called the People's Revolutionary Front, and in planning for something new and very big either here or on the Continent. We haven't been very successful in penetrating their new organization. This is our chance to see just exactly what they're up to.”

“Are we sure they're all still in there, Colonel?” Higgins wanted to know.

“For that matter,” Dunn added, “how many people are we facing in there? Any ideas?”

“Both good questions,” Wentworth said. He nodded toward the woman in BDUs in the corner. “That young lady over there started this whole show, so to speak. Her name is Summers, and she was invited into the house by one of the terrorists. She, ah, didn't know he was a terrorist at the time, of course.”

“Probably she didn't get to see his calling card,” one of the SAS men joked.

“She claims to have seen five people inside,” Wentworth continued. “The two Korean suspects, one male, one female. The man who took her and a girlfriend to the house . . . and he, according to Miss Summers, is dead. Plus two other gunmen, one of them with a foreign accent that Miss Summers thinks was German. Of course, it was unlikely that she would see everybody in there. Our observers have sighted in on two terrs on the roof armed with M-16 rifles, plus at least three more armed men visible inside the front windows on the fourth floor.”

“Fifth floor,” Roselli murmured. Higgins nudged him in the side with an elbow.

Wentworth ignored them both. “The IR scope may have as many as seven people spotted in that fourth-floor front room, though with the fire in there we may not be getting accurate readings. We've also gotten fuzzy readings from as many as four or five targets at a time on other floors. Based on this, our Intel chaps are guestimating the total hostile force at between twelve and sixteen shooters. I think we should extend that number to twenty, just to be on the safe side.”

“Twenty, Colonel?” Cartwright said. “And you want to send in four whole sticks? One would do.”

A “stick” was two four-man SAS teams, eight men in all.

Wentworth smiled, a cold expression. “Don't worry, gentlemen. I have a feeling that there's going to be more than enough fun to go around this time up.”

Roselli had been in more than his share of house assaults, both in training and in real life. Looking at the small fortress represented on the colonel's blueprints, he was sure that Wentworth was right.

“Okay, right,” Wentworth said. “This is the way we'll do it. Hoskins . . . you'll have the first crack at them. Take your stick in on the helos. We've spotted two hostiles on the roof . . . about here. We'll hit them with snipers from across the road as you approach. Your boys should be able to abseil to the roof without opposition.”

“Right.”

“Jenkins.”

“Sir.”

“Your troop will take up position ahead of H-hour here, in the flat adjacent to the target. We've already quietly evacuated this whole section of the street, of course, and boys from S-section have been in there all morning, very, very quietly taking bricks out of the wall.”

“They have a boroscope in place yet?”

“Not yet. There's always a chance your prey is going to notice that little black straw poking through his wall. Our lads have it down to the plaster, though, and you'll be able to take a quick look around before you go in.”

“Right, sir.”

“Dunn.”

“Sir.”

“Your boys will knock at the front door, then take the ground floor. We expect the heaviest concentration of enemy firepower to be there.” Pulling several of the architectural blueprints to the top of the stack, he unrolled one to show the ground-floor plans. “You'll want to have a close look at these before jump-off,” Wentworth continued. “Just inside the front door, here, you'll be facing a stairway up and down, with a landing overlooking the front lobby. Make enough noise there, and it might distract them, keep them from investigating upstairs.”

“You can count on us, Colonel.”

“Potter, you've got the fourth stick. You'll be in reserve across the street. I'll either throw you in where you're needed, or use you for the mop-up afterward. I'll also expect you to manage the sniper team.”

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Major Christopher Potter sounded a bit disappointed at being left out of the initial assault.

“What about us, Colonel?” Roselli said.

“What about you? If you're thinking of coming along, forget it. Your bosses would flame my arse if anything happened to you boys.”

“Shit, Colonel,” Brown said. “We lose SEALs in training accidents all the time. This don't look no different to me.”

“Yeah,” Jaybird said, echoing the sentiment. “It's a piece of cake.”

“Look, Colonel,” Roselli said. “Tell you what. Brown here is one of the best snipers in the whole SEAL program. We call him ‘Magic.' Give him a Barrett .50 or an M21 and he can reach out and touch someone from a thousand meters. You could put him with your snipers, as an extra set of eyes, couldn't you?”