North Korean Blowup (24 page)

Alpha squad jogged down the hill toward the concrete block building. Before they were halfway there a truck sized door swung up on the structure and an armored half track rolled out. On the back set a fifty caliber quad machine gun. It was four fifties set in a square and rigged to all fire at once. It could plow up the ground with big fifty caliber rounds with all four guns firing in concert at the same target.

“Scatter,” Hunter bellowed. Try to get his tracks or tires with twenties. We’ve got to stop him or we’re all dead men.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Hunter’s Alpha squad dropped to the ground and fired at the half track. Hunter concentrated on the front tires blasting one contact round at the rig jolting forward almost directly at him. The round went two feet wide and exploded against the building. His second round exploded into the tire, disintegrating it and dropping the front of the rig to the right, digging the bare rim into the dirt and rocks and stopping all forward motion.

More twenty caliber rounds hit the big rig, one splashing the driver out of his seat and spewing his dead corpse out the door of the rig into the dirt. A round caught the gunner on the quad fifty just as he let loose a twenty round burst from the big guns. They chopped up the dirt and rocks twenty feet behind the sprawled SEALs. They were the last rounds he fired as a contact twenty millimeter exploded on the gunner’s seat and pulverized him into dog food.

The half track sputtered and died. A twenty mm round hit the fuel tank and the whole vehicle exploded in one huge gasoline enhanced fireball.

“Let’s move into that building’s open door,” Hunter said into his radio. Alpha squad lifted out of the dirt and stalked forward, watching around them for any enemy. They ran to the wall and Hunter peered inside. It was an enclosed room, evidently built specifically for the half track. A connecting man sized door showed on the right side wall. Hunter and Lawrence ran for the inside wall and moved up to the door. Hunter tried the knob. It turned. He stayed well to the side of the door, and turned the knob fully. He shoved the panel open. It swung out and in a heartbeat six rounds of hot lead poured through the opening.

Lawrence pulled a fragger grenade from his combat vest and held it up so Hunter could see it. The squad leader nodded. Lawrence pulled the safety pin, let the arming handle pop off and held the bomb for two seconds before he flipped it through the doorway. Two second later the grenade went off with a resounding roar and they heard shrapnel hitting the outside of the wall.

Hunter and Lawrence stormed through the open door, scanning the room.
               “I’ve got the right,” Hunter said, his Bull Pup set on the 5.56 barrel. Inside they checked the big room and saw only one soldier sitting against a wooden box, holding his left arm that was bright red with hot blood. He lifted an AK-47 with one hand and tried to fire. Lawrence blasted him with three rounds from his MP-5 subgun and he flopped back, out of action.

The big room, forty foot square and one story high, was mostly bare. It had the appearance of a storage area, Hunter decided. Twin door led off it to the right. They headed that way. Before they got to the doors, one burst open and two soldiers rushed through firing AK-47’s on full auto hosing down the area in front of them in an unaimed fusillade. The rounds missed the two SEALs who chopped the armed men down where they stood. One rolled over and tried to lift his weapon, but Hunter drilled him with two three round bursts from his 5.56 barrel.  Both SEALs ran for the wall and flattened against it.

Lawrence edged up to the door and peered around it. He jerked his head back. 

“Six of them, behind cover. Wooden boxes. Another fragger?”

Hunter held up two fingers and pulled a grenade off his vest. He jerked out the safety pin and held down the handle as he crawled up under where Lawrence stood by the door. Lawrence had his grenade ready.

“No delay, throw them when the handle pops,” Hunter said. The SEAL above him nodded.

“Now,” Hunter said and Lawrence lobbed his grenade through the door and Hunter threw his low and hard so it skittered along the concrete floor. The twin explosions created a shock wave inside the forty foot square enclosure. As soon as the shrapnel stopped singing, both SEALs charged into the room with their automatic weapons up.

On the right Hunter gunned down one North Korean who lifted up over a heavy wooden box with his rifle. Firing erupted on the left side of the room, and Lawrence screeched in pain, and then fired twenty rounds into the spot where the man came from who had wounded him. He ran forward and fired again. Hunter concentrated on his half of the big room. He caught one soldier about to fire at him and shot him three times before he could pull the trigger. The soldier slammed backwards from the force of the hot lead. Another man lifted up from behind a box and ran for a doorway. Hunter nailed him with six rounds and he went down and dead.

Both SEALs ran to the center of the room, then on to the far wall. Nothing moved.

“Make sure,” Hunter said.

Lawrence checked the bodies and fired twice, then nodded.

“All clear,” he said.

“You hit?”

“Just a scratch,” Lawrence said, the usual SEAL comment no matter how bad the wound. Hunter checked it. It was high in his chest, over his heart and probably touching a lung.

“Foster, get your medic kit into the building. The second room. We’ve got a man hit.”

Foster burst through the door. He’d been in the first room. Now he saw Lawrence who had sat down next to a box, his face pale and the pain now gushing through him. The adrenalin released during the brief fire fight had dulled the first pain, now it came through like a blowtorch hitting bare flesh.

Foster opened his shirt and checked the wound. He reached around to Lawrence’s back under his shirt. The round had not exited.

That would be a problem. He punched two ampoules of morphine into Lawrence’s arm and put a sterile bandage over the small entry wound.

“Just sit there for a while,” Foster said. “The morphine will kick in in about two minutes. Try to relax.”

“Hurts like hell, Doc.”

“That’s why you get the big bucks. Now just take it easy. Looks like you cleaned out the rest of the bad guys here.”

Outside, Bancroft had brought his men down from the ridge and cleared the rest of the area around the block building. He came in the room as Hunter examined a structure at the far end of the area.

“An elevator,” Hunter said. “Big one, big enough to take one of their large nukes downstairs.”

“I wonder how far down?”

“We’ll find out. All we have to do is figure out the controls on this damned machinery. Get Ho in here. He can at least read the directions.”
               Ho heard the talk on his radio and ran inside and stared at the elevator. He read the printed notices and shook his head. Then he lifted a steel cover and found a small computer and screen.

“Take password.” he said.

“We have any live prisoners?” Hunter asked on his radio.
               “Had one outside,” a voice said. “But he had an accident.”

“I’ve got one,” Gorman said on his radio. “He was playing possum and tried to crawl away. Outside of a broken arm, he’s in good shape.”

“Bring him in here,” Hunter ordered.

When the North Korean soldier saw Ho he began chattering away like a machine gun. Ho held up his hand and slowed him down.

“He says he wants to live. He’ll do anything to keep from being killed.”

“Ask him if he can work the elevator.”

A moment later, Ho shook his head. “He say only lieutenant know how. All in book.”

They looked around for a manual that might tell the secret. Tran found it in a small drawer in the side of the elevator structure. He gave it to Ho.

It took him five minutes to figure out what he needed to know.

Hunter used the radio. “Beth, you can come down now. The area is secure. We’re in the block building but have a small problem.      

Ho checked the computer, then the manual, turned on the computer, and made an entry. The screen flashed a red lettered warning.

“Say access denied. Asks for password.”

They tried a dozen words but nothing worked. Tran told them to try Kim Jong Il.

Ho punched in the Korean dictator’s name and the computer accepted it and then Ho entered an access word from the manual.

An electric motor whirred, a panel slid back and red and green buttons showed. Ho moved over and punched the green button. Twin metal doors on what looked like the back wall opened revealing an eight foot wide five foot deep elevator car.

Ho, Hunter, Bancroft, Tran and Beth stepped into the car and Ho pushed another button. The doors closed and the car dropped downward.

“How far we going down?” Beth asked.

“No way of knowing,” Hunter said.

The downward motion slowed, then stopped and the doors opened automatically. In front of them in blinding electric lights they saw a rough hewn cavern twenty feet deep and half that wide. In the center on a concrete slab sat the second completed North Korean nuclear bomb.

“It’s your party,” Hunter said nodding at Beth.

Beth walked up to the bomb and circled around it.

“No hidden safety devices that I can see. It’s resting on concrete with holders on both sides. Practical. The access plates are in the same general area as the first one. Looks like I better go to work.”

She put down her tool kit and opened it, then started to unscrew the access plate on the side near the tail of the bomb.

Hunter pointed at his second in command. “Bradford, you and Tran stay with Beth. The rest of us up to the top. Ho, can you make that lift work both ways?”

Topside they checked the area. They put C-5 on both the cars and the one truck that hadn’t been destroyed and blew them apart.

They picked up thirty full magazines for the AKs. Tanner went to bring their much used six by into the area. Jefferson checked the cooking building and found little that was still edible. He saved a few loaves of rice bread and a half gallon of peanut butter.

“I didn’t know that the Koreans even knew about peanut butter,”

Jefferson said.

They had all of the AKs they wanted. They found one Chinese made submachine gun, but after firing it a few times, the SEALs preferred the MP-5.

Hunter went to check on Lawrence. Foster motioned him to one side from where the wounded man lay near the six by.

“He’s hurting. That round went in high on his chest and didn’t come out. Had to be an AK slug, so where is it? I think it missed the top of his lung, but I’m not sure. He hasn’t been wheezing like he might if his lung was taking on blood or collapsing. I’ve maxed him out on morphine. He’s going to need a doctor within twenty-four.”

They went to the SEAL who looked up and grinned. “Only a damn scratch, Cap. I’m fit for duty. Mark that on the fucking roster.”

“Will do, Lawrence,” Hunter said. “Right now your detail is to lay there and be quiet, because a whole shit pot full of slants are zeroing their ray guns in on us and any movement means instant vaporization.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“You rest easy. Well get you out of here as soon as we can.”             Hunter went to the six by to check on their KIA. He zipped down the heavy black body bag and nodded. Good, no odor. The dry ice vapors gushed out of the bag. Hunter touched Sanborn’s hand.

 Yeah, frozen solid. He’d keep until they can get him to the destroyer. If they do that in another twenty four. That depended how quickly Beth can do her work.

Hunter had the men police up their equipment, stowed the extra AKs in the six by, and formed a perimeter defense around the block building.

Downstairs, Beth wiped sweat off her forehead. She looked up at Bradford. “These assholes didn’t know shit what they were doing. This one is not anything like the physical make up of the other one. This one looks more primitive, like it was the first one they made. I’ve got to trace wires all over the place just to be sure they go where they are supposed to. There’s a chance this bomb never would have worked, even if they set it off on purpose. Damn this bugs me.”

“Any idea on time?” Bradford asked.

“Not a glimmer. Give me a half hour and I’ll have a better idea.

How far underground do you think we are?”

“My guess from riding lots of elevators, is that we’re at least six, maybe eight stories down under. That would be about eighty feet of bed rock.”

“Glad Ho sent the elevator back down.” Beth shivered just a moment. “Not that I’m claustrophobic or anything like that, but it would be a real bummer to be stuck down here with no way to get out.”

She wiped sweat off her forehead and went back to work on the bomb. Why in hell didn’t they know what they were doing? They made it this far, Dr. Sung should have known. She smiled. He did know. He probably made the test bombs perfectly, then altered these other ones just enough so they would have a difficult time ever reaching anything close to a chain reaction and the big bang. She snipped two more wires just to be sure, then picked up the four quarter pound C-5 blocks and placed them where they would do the most damage. She waved at Bancroft.

“Done. I’ve put in the detonator timers but didn’t set them yet. Let’s get out of here and see what Hunter wants to do.”

They went up the elevator and she found Hunter next to the six by that had become their home.

“Ready when you are C.B.” she said.

“You used that one before. Did you set the timers?”

“No, I figured I’d let you do that. I didn’t know how long you wanted to set them for.”

“We do the bomb, then after it goes off, we do the elevator. I’ll go down with Ho now and set them. Twenty minutes should be enough time to get up that shaft. If not, pay my respects to my family.”

She frowned as he left, grabbed Ho and they jogged over to the block building.

Just over twenty four minutes later they heard a rumble deep in the bed rock. Hunter grinned and gave her a thumbs up. Then he and Chang went to put C-5 charges on the elevator.

“We set the charges, give them five minutes, then send the elevator down to the bottom where it blows,” Chang suggested.