Fires of War (25 page)

The door at the back didn’t have a card reader or handle. It was also hooked to an alarm. Ferguson decided he’d leave the building for later, after he took some soil samples and checked out the trucks.

Getting across the compound without getting caught by the video cameras took a bit of work. It was relatively easy to see where the cameras were and what they covered—each used floodlights to illuminate its view. Ducking around them, though, was like running through a free-form maze. It took nearly two hours to get to the warehouse area where the trucks had been parked. Ferguson filled a dozen bags with soil on his way over.

The first thing he did was calibrate the gamma meter—a replacement for the one Guns had lost—and hold it next to the building. The needle didn’t budge.

Ferguson took two shovelfuls of dirt from the northwestern corner of the building, then climbed the eight-foot chain-link fence that separated all but the front of the building from the parking lot.

A camera sat under the front eave of the building, covering the lot. Unsure how far he could go before getting in its view, Ferguson considered climbing up and disabling it, but one look at the slick metal sides of the building made his knee groan. He decided he could reach the trucks without being seen if he stayed close to the wall. Ferguson slipped off his backpack and got down on his hands and knees to crawl.

He didn’t pick up anything from the gamma meter at the first truck. Pausing near the tailgate, he slid a gamma detection tag into the chassis just beneath the truck bed. Then he rolled to the next truck, repeating the process. When he reached the third truck without getting any indication from the gamma meter, he pressed the button to initiate the self-calibration sequence again, wondering if it was malfunctioning.

As he did, he heard the rumble of a car approaching.

~ * ~

21

DUE SOUTH OF KAWKSAN, NORTH KOREA

Rankin leapt from the helicopter, rushing with the others as they ran into the open field overlooking the rocky shore. The team spread out: Half ran in the direction of a stone wall that stood near the road, the rest took positions along the cliffside. It was not quite pitch black, but seeing more than ten feet was impossible without his night goggles.

The field was empty, as was the nearby road.

Rankin scanned the area, turning slowly to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Then he took out the handheld global positioner and walked to the exact coordinates Colonel Van Buren had given him.

Nada.

“We making a pickup, or what?” said Sergeant Barren, his voice more a demand than a question.

“We’ll see what happens,” spit back Rankin.

“Fuggit,” muttered Barren, trotting off to check on the men near the road.

Rankin couldn’t necessarily disagree with Barren’s assessment. They were only a few miles from a North Korean army base. Sitting on the ground here for any particular length of time wasn’t all that good an idea, especially since they had to do it again tomorrow night if no one showed up.

But that’s what they were going to do.

Rankin went over toward the cliffside, checking on the men there. He squatted next to each one of the men, not saying anything—what was there to say?—just showing them he was there.

“Oh-twenty,” said Barren finally, coming over and pointing to his watch. “What do you say?”

“Ten more minutes,” said Rankin.

“You briefed fifteen, not thirty.”

“I want to make sure.”

“Right.”

The ten minutes passed more slowly than the first twenty. The wind stiffened. It wasn’t bitter cold—the temperature had climbed to the high thirties, a veritable heat spell—but it added to the discomfort nonetheless.

Finally, Rankin hopped over the wall and trotted to the middle of the road, taking one last look himself.

Nothing.

“Saddle up,” he told the others. “Let’s hit the road.”

~ * ~

22

SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, SOUTH KOREA

The lights grew stronger. Ferguson tried to sink into the ground, hiding from them in the musky, oil-scented dampness.

This is what the grave will smell like, he thought.

The lights moved to his right, then came back. The car stopped and moved, stopped and moved; it was making a U-turn.

They Finally the lights moved away for good. Ferguson planted a tag, then made his way back to his pack, retreating around the building to find a way inside.

The door in the rear of the building had a wired alarm, with the wires running along the top and the sensor near the upper-left-hand corner. Ferguson worked a long, flexible metal strip into the gap between the door and molding, pushing it until it struck the alarm connection plate on the jamb. He used the current meter to make sure he had a connection, then taped the metal in place.

The lock was a high-quality German-made model that used mushroom pins in its works, a difficult challenge to pick. Ferguson had to alter his usual technique, gently and loosely prodding the inner workings of the lock before getting it to give way.

The door opened into a vast empty space. The concrete floor was swept clean, the ribs of the building bare. Ferguson made sure there was no motion detector, then slipped inside. He checked for radiation contamination—none—and put tags near the overhead doors at the front of the building.

Ferguson circled back across the compound, aiming at one of the two smaller buildings. Just as he approached the front door, he caught a glimmer of something on his right and jerked back.

It was a video camera.

He froze, silently cursing. Slowly he backed away, wondering how he had missed it.

It took him a few minutes to spot the light that was supposed to be illuminating the camera’s area. It was out.

So had he been seen? Or was there simply not enough light?

Ferguson ran his fingers around his mouth, considering the situation. Given how the guards had responded the other night, if he had been seen, the entire security force would be racing here.

No sense wasting time then, he thought, stepping to the door.

Ferguson swiped the card in the reader and tugged on the latch. The door didn’t open. He swiped the card again, but it remained locked. Leaving the card in the reader didn’t work either.

Maybe the security people had a way of locking down the campus buildings and were on their way.

Ferguson jumped back into the shadows, fingering a tear gas grenade. But after ten minutes passed, he realized no one was coming. The problem had to be with the card. It must be programmed to allow its user access only to certain areas or at certain times.

“OK, Miss Secretary,” he whispered to the card. “Let’s try you at door number two.”

Ferguson slinked through the shadows to the next building, the largest on the site. It had three stories and—most important for Ferguson—a card lock on the door at the rear that wasn’t covered by a video camera, not even one with a broken light. He checked for alarms, then took out his pilfered identity card.

The door buzzed as soon as he put the card into the reader. Ferguson held his breath on the threshold, listening to make sure the place was empty.

Red exit lights and pairs of dull yellow bulbs posted along the ceiling lit the hallway. Each door was made of wood; placards with Korean characters hung next to each. Ferguson photographed the hall and the placards, then chose an office door about midway down the hall. It was locked, and not just with a run-of-the-mill, any-screwdriver-will-do lock, but a Desmo, an eight-pin isolated key tumbler that was almost impossible to pick.

Almost.

Ferguson had to dig deep into his lock-picking tools to take it on, fiddling with a custom-made tension wrench and wirelike spring. The lock gave almost no feedback before suddenly giving way. Ferguson was so surprised that he dropped the screwdriverlike tension wrench on the ground.

“Real quiet, dude,” he whispered, scooping it up. He left the door slightly ajar and slipped inside.

He found himself in an office shared by three people; each had a small desk and his or her own computer. Stealing a hard drive would have been easy, but it would also be pretty obvious.

Pulling one of the computers out, he saw that they were networked, and that the LEDs were flashing. Unhooking it or even just leaving it and booting up might alert a remote system administrator, or at least leave a record of the intrusion.

Ferguson was debating whether the risk was worth it when he heard a sound from the hallway. By the time he got back to the door, footsteps were coming in his direction.

Easing the door back against the jamb, he kept his hand on the knob rather than risking the sound of a click as it snapped into place. Then he took a long, slow breath, pushing the air from his lungs as silently as possible.

Whoever was walking toward him was wearing plastic-soled shoes that squeaked loudly as he walked. Ferguson eased his right hand into his jacket and took out his pepper spray.

Keys jangled.

The steps were next to him.

Then they were past.

Ferguson heard the door to the next office open. The person who’d gone in began to whistle.

He glanced at his watch. It was already quarter to five. The operation had taken him considerably longer than he had thought it would. If he was going to get out to the fence before it got light, he had to leave now.

Ferguson looked back at the room. There were boxes of backup disks next to the PCs. Reasoning that they were less likely to be missed, he helped himself to a couple from each desk, choosing at random since he had no idea what the Korean characters meant.

Outside, light from the next office flooded the corridor. Ferguson got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the doorway, looking up from the bottom to see inside. A man sat with his back to him, facing a computer a short distance away.

Ferguson tiptoed past, stopped to make sure he hadn’t been seen, then continued to the end of the hallway.

He was just about to put his hands on the door’s crash bar when he heard the squeak of the man’s shoes once again.

Ferguson threw himself into the open stairwell to his left. As soon as he did, he realized this was a mistake; a set of vending machines sat on the landing between the floors above. He scrambled down the nearby steps, ducking just out of sight before the man and his squeaking shoes trotted up the steps to the vending machines.

The doors below the stairwell had narrow glass slits on them. Curious about what might be on the bottom level of the building, Ferguson eased down and tried one.

It wasn’t locked. He pulled open the door and entered a vast room of computers. Large mainframes and server units lined the walls and formed clusters around the pillars. Metal cabinets formed low-rising walls at different points in the space, which extended the entire width of the building.

The cabinets were locked, but it was a simple matter to pick them, and as soon as he was sure there weren’t any monitoring devices or alarms, he slid his tools in and opened one up.

Large tape discs, the type used to store and back up massive amounts of data, sat in the cabinet. Most if not all had been there awhile—there was a layer of dust on the bottom row. Ferguson selected one, then closed up the case. He took some photos with his small camera, and went back the way he’d come.

~ * ~