Targets of Opportunity (23 page)

Then, arising from the darkness ahead of them, they saw the headlights of several vehicles coming at them. The helicopters had obviously radioed their position to the shore patrol at Namp’o.

Sang slammed hard on the brake again, this time bringing the car to a screeching halt. He turned to Bergenn with a look of desperate fear.

“It’s all right,” Bergenn said. Then he held his automatic pistol to Sang’s head. “We’ll tell them you were our prisoner. You understand? You tell them you were a hostage. A prisoner. Okay?”

Sang responded with a nervous nod of his head.

By now several North Korean soldiers had rushed from their transports and were surrounding the car. A voice over a loudspeaker ordered the occupants to get out.

When Sang began to say something, Bergenn shook his head. “No translation required. Let’s go.”

As they got out of the car, Bergenn was still holding the Tokarev in one hand and the AK-47 in the other. Sang climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood beside the door, motionless.

The amplified voice, this time in English, ordered Bergenn to drop his weapons.

He looked around, seeing the situation was hopeless. There were already soldiers in position to the left and right, and other vehicles had arrived, coming to a halt on the road behind them. He bent down and placed the pistol and automatic rifle on the ground. “I have a wounded man in the back of the car!” he shouted.

“Get him out,” the voice demanded.

“He cannot be moved. He needs medical attention.”

There was silence for a few moments. Then, out of the glare of the numerous lights, an officer came walking toward them. “Where is the other man?” he demanded in English.

“In the backseat,” Bergenn told him, turning toward Raabe.

“Do not move. Put your hands in back of your head.”

Bergenn did as he was told, facing the officer again and waiting. Sang began to speak quickly in Korean, apparently protesting his innocence.

The officer continued toward them, a gun in his hand. Bergenn could now see there were several other soldiers advancing on his flanks. The officer stopped a couple of yards from the front of the Fiat. Sang was still talking when the officer barked something at him, and Sang became quiet. The officer looked Bergenn up and down. Then he pointed to Sang and said in English, “This man is a traitor to his country and to our Great Leader.” He then raised his pistol and fired three quick shots. Sang crumpled to the ground.

The officer walked around the car, looking down at Sang as if admiring his work. Then he kicked Sang’s inert body a couple of times, just to be sure. He peered into the backseat, where Raabe lay, barely conscious. When he returned his attention to Bergenn, he said, “We have other plans for you, my American friends.” Then he shouted some orders and his men came forward, handcuffing Bergenn and dragging Raabe onto the road.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

IN THE NORTH KOREAN COUNTRYSIDE, SOUTH OF HYESAN

B
Y THE TIME
Bergenn and Raabe were captured, Hea had reached a small village outside Samsu, just south of Hyesan. Dawn was not long to arrive, but they still had the cover of darkness as she brought the sedan to a stop behind an ancient wooden structure. Sandor and Hea got out and stood facing each other.

“We will have to walk from here,” she said. “We cannot let the other villagers see the car arriving at my parents’ home.”

“What about him?” Sandor asked, pointing a thumb over his shoulder.

“We cannot take him and risk being seen. We will have to come back for him.”

Sandor yanked Hwang from the backseat and dropped him on the ground. He double-checked the tape around Hwang’s ankles and wrists, then said, “Anything you want to tell us before you take a nap?” The Korean glared at him, so Sandor replaced the tape over Hwang’s mouth, then struck him across the temple with the butt of his gun. “Okay,” he said, and he and the girl lifted the unconscious man into the trunk and slammed it shut.

————

At the small farmhouse just down the road, Sandor asked for no introduction to the members of Hea’s family and he received none. He assumed the elderly man and woman were her parents. The young man with whom she did most of her talking appeared to be her brother.

After a quick conversation in Korean, Hea took Sandor aside and explained their escape route. They would be hidden in the back of a truck with Hwang. Then, as soon as people began setting out for work just after sunrise, her brother would drive them northeast, near the edge of the Yalu River valley and then along the towering range of mountains to their west, until they neared the border with Russia. At that point they would be on their own.

Sandor knew they were close to China, but that route would certainly be more dangerous than the two-hour drive north. Diplomatic relations among these neighboring countries made it all but impossible to smuggle Hwang out of the country through China. Moscow was likely to be far more cooperative than Beijing and, as Sandor well knew, the post-Soviet Russians were also easier to bribe.

“What about an overseas communication in the meantime? Phone, e-mail, anything?”

Hea shook her head. “Kwan tells me it is too dangerous to try that now, not with so much driving ahead of us. Too much time to intercept the communication and then locate us. Then we would be, uh, how do you say…”

“Screwed.”

She managed a smile.

“Any chance we can put a call through as we get closer to Khasan?”

“Yes, Kwan thinks we can.”

“Good. So explain to me why all three of us need to go. Why can’t you remain behind?”

A sadness filled her pretty eyes. “I cannot. After what has happened I have no future here.”

Sandor nodded but said nothing.

“I am worried about my family. We must leave no trace of our being here.”

“Will they get rid of the car?”

“Yes, after we are gone.”

Sandor reached out and took her hand. “Everything will be all right,” he told her. “Everything.”

She looked into his eyes, her unflinching gaze saying that she only wished she could believe him.

————

Just before first light, Hea and Jordan hurried out the door of the small house and climbed in the rear of a Korean lorry. There was a shallow compartment beneath the floorboards where Hwang had already been placed, still bound and gagged and quite unconscious.

“I didn’t hit him that hard,” Sandor said.

“No,” the girl explained, “he was drugged when my brother retrieved him from the car.”

Kwan, who had climbed into the back of the truck behind them, simply nodded, then said something in Korean to which his sister could not manage a reply. All she could do was wipe her eyes. Then Sandor lay down beside Hwang, and Hea got in beside him as her brother laid the AK-47 at their feet and placed a wooden lid atop them, casting the three of them into total darkness. Above them they could hear Kwan rearranging boxes overhead, then slamming and securing the tailgate. A few minutes later the engine of the truck sputtered to life, and they began to move.

Of the many fears Jordan Sandor had conquered in his years of military and covert espionage service, a slight case of claustrophobia was not among them. Now he was trapped in a virtual coffin, his fate belonging to a man to whom he had not even been introduced and a Korean girl he had met less than forty-eight hours before. He remained still in the blackness as they rumbled ahead, feeling there was barely enough room to take a deep breath, struggling against the anxiety of this total helplessness, eased only by the fact that his right hand was clutching the Tokarev he had taken from the soldier back at Rungrado Stadium, and the pleasant sensation of being pressed up against this attractive young woman.

“I just want you to know,” he whispered to her, “I never kiss on the first date.”

He hoped she was smiling as she said, “Shhh, we must be totally silent.”

He waited a few seconds, then said, “Who could possibly hear us with all the noise this truck makes?”

When she offered no response he thought about his teammates, hoping they had made it to safety. If Bergenn and Raabe had been captured he knew there was no way they would be broken, no way they would divulge Sandor’s route north. Raabe was so badly wounded he had no idea which way Sandor’s car was heading. Bergenn was never going to cave in, certainly not through torture, not even with chemical inducement. By the time they managed to extract anything at all from him it would be too vague to be of use, and by then Sandor and Hea should be safely out of the country. Or so Sandor told himself as he managed his nerves, just as he had been trained, one slow, deep breath after another.

————

As the truck rolled on, Sandor tried to keep track of the passing time, but it was nearly impossible in this deprivation chamber. His legs and back began to ache, and he felt there was barely enough room to breathe, let alone stretch. When he felt the truck slow to a halt his sense of relief was overwhelming but he said nothing. He listened as the engine was turned off, and wondered if they had reached their destination. Then he heard loud voices and the sound of the tailgate being opened. His sense of elation was immediately replaced with apprehension as his instincts told him they had reached some sort of roadblock. His fear was confirmed when he heard the sound of boots boarding the rear compartment, moving boxes around as they stomped about overhead.

He recognized Kwan’s voice, calm and deferential in tone, and the angry voices of other men, obviously soldiers, demanding answers that Kwan was doing his best to provide. Hea’s body tensed up as she lay beside him, and he only hoped that whatever narcotics they had administered to Hwang earlier that morning would keep him out for a few more minutes.

There was no way for him to understand what was being said and for an instant he thought of Zimmermann, with all his linguistic skills, now a casualty of war in the North Korean countryside. By the sound of it, there were at least three other men up there besides Kwan. If they found the lid to their hiding place, Sandor knew he would be momentarily blinded when it was lifted and the light from above hit them. His chances of raising his hand and getting off three accurate shots was almost nil, but he opened his eyes as wide as he could, preparing to squint when he heard the floorboard being moved, giving him the best chance to adjust. He also placed his finger on the trigger of the Tokarev, preparing for the moment when surprise would be his only ally.

After another interminable minute or so the tone of the voices above him told Sandor that the conversation was winding down. The noise of boxes being shuffled around came to a stop. That was followed by the sound of men leaving the truck and the tailgate slamming shut.

In a few moments the engine shuddered to life and they were back on their way.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

GUADELOUPE

L
IEUTENANT
V
AUCHON HAD
been removed from the carnage outside Fort Oscar and was taken by air with the other victims to the hospital at Guadeloupe. All things considered, he had fared better than most.

The casualty list included several of the workers on the lower level. The entire team of terrorists had been killed, including the two guards Vauchon and his men had disposed of outside their barracks. All of the survivors from downstairs had been injured to one extent or another by the explosions and gunfire. The workers from the upper level had made it to safety, but several of them, as well as Vauchon’s men and the French police, had sustained gunshot wounds and various levels of lacerations, broken bones, and assorted other injuries in the aftermath of the blast. They had all been shot at, were covered in debris, pelted with flying metal fragments, and subjected to the fire that resulted from the explosions.

In the midst of this devastation, the entire communications center in the basement of Fort Oscar had been demolished.

Officials from the French Ministry of Defense were dispatched from Paris to Guadeloupe, along with an assortment of representatives from other countries. No one as yet had any idea what to make of these attacks in the Caribbean. The downing of a commercial jetliner, followed by the destruction of Fort Oscar simply made no sense and, more surprising perhaps, no terrorist group had yet taken credit for the assaults.

Since all of the perpetrators were dead, and the surviving police, soldiers, and staff workers all credited Vauchon with the rescue of those who made it out alive, he appeared to be the only man left to question. After treatment for some cuts and bruises, the gunshot wound to his left shoulder, and a fracture of his left forearm, Vauchon was released from the infirmary and whisked by car to the French military headquarters at Pointe-à-Pitre. No one with sufficient authority or information to undertake a meaningful debriefing had yet arrived in Guadeloupe from Europe, and so the thankless task befell the colonel on duty. An officer accustomed to dealing with issues no more complex or intriguing than chasing down drug smugglers and enforcing immigration procedures, he was the wrong man for the job.

Lieutenant Vauchon and Colonel Picard sat across a conference table from each other. The colonel began the interview by heaping praise on the French soldier for his bravery under fire, perhaps hoping to string enough superlatives together to allow time for someone with the proper credentials to arrive and take him off the hook. Eventually, however, the congratulatory monologue came to an end.

Although Vauchon had endured an extremely traumatic night and morning, he still managed some sympathy for a superior officer who he knew, even before he arrived, was way out of his depth. “Colonel, I know this is a difficult situation for all of us,” he said. “Do you think it would be helpful if I simply provide a narrative of what occurred? It would spare you the need to ask questions until I have offered my full report.”

Colonel Picard’s enthusiasm for the suggestion was worthy of news that he had just won the national lottery. “Yes, yes, by all means. Excellent,” he said.