Ballistic Force

CHAPTER SEVEN

Changchon Rehabilitation Center, North Korea

Lieutenant Corporal Yulim Zhi-Weon finished his lunch of fried oysters, bacon and scrambled eggs, then pushed the plate away and pulled a silver cigarette case from his uniform shirt pocket. By the time he’d lit a cigarette, a prison trustee had taken away the plate and replaced it with a fresh cup of coffee, a crystal ashtray and a small basket filled with fresh pastries delivered earlier in the day from Kaesong. Yulim’s quarters was an air-conditioned, three-room bungalow set on a tree-lined bluff overlooking the prison yard. There was a satellite dish on the roof, giving Yulim more than eighty different channels to choose from on the high-definition television in the spacious den set off from the dining room. Back in his bedroom, the sixteen-year-old girl he’d taken a fancy to back at the poppy fields was sleeping off the sexual workout he’d just put her through.

As he slowly smoked his cigarette, Yulim stared down at the prison yard. He could see a row of inmates filing past the mess tent for their daily rations, a cup of rice soaked in chicken broth. In light of today’s suicide and the subsequent killing of three more workers, Yulim wondered if it might be a good move to increase the rations slightly. Nothing major; maybe a cube of tofu or a few string beans. It would be a small price to pay if it would pick up morale at the camp. Yes, he’d told General Oh that he was sure he’d make his quota in terms of opium production, but that had been spin control. In truth, the Changchon fields had fallen drastically short of their projected output, and Yulim knew he could only bribe officials in Chongjin for so long before they refused to falsify the delivery tallies any further.

He needed better work from the inmates, and cracking the whip obviously wasn’t the solution. Of course, if the other plan Yulim was pursuing bore fruit, the shortcomings here at Changchon would become a moot point. If the other plan were to succeed, Yulim would no longer have to concern himself with incurring the wrath of Kim Jong-il and his military hierarchy. Everything would change; everything would be different.

Yulim took a last puff from his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the ashtray and sorted through the pastries, settling on a chocolate éclair. He dunked it in his coffee and was taking his first bite when there was a knock at the front door. Yulim nodded to one of the two security guards posted inside the doorway. The guard opened the door to yet another sentry.

“Major Jin Choon-Yei to see the Lieutenant Corporal,” the sentry announced.

“Send him in,” he called out, adding, “and wait outside. Everyone.”

The guards ushered the prison trustee out of the bungalow, then the major entered and joined Yulim at the dining-room table. Yulim held out his cigarette case, but Jin waved it away and helped himself instead to one of the pastries.

“So,” Yulim said, “how did the grand tour with General Oh go?”

Jin shrugged as he bit into his pastry. “It was the usual. I told him what he wanted to hear and he was suitably impressed.”

“So he still suspects nothing?”

The major shook his head. “In his mind, it’s all systems go.’ He’s sleeping now, but come morning he’ll see his nephew at the launch site and he’ll hear more of the same.”

“Good,” Yulim responded. “If all the other generals are so easily duped, it will make things that much easier for us.”

Jin chuckled. “I still can’t believe he would think you’d have no idea what was going on inside the mountain. All those night shipments moving directly past the camp here. Does he think no one notices anything?”

“He takes me for a good soldier who doesn’t ask too many questions. He figures that for all I care you could be building an apartment building instead of a missile compound.”

Jin finished his pastry, then confided, “I guess I’m a bad soldier, then, because I asked him about the defectors.”

A scowl crossed Yulim’s face. “Was that wise?”

“Don’t worry,” Jin assured his colleague. “The general and I go way back together. He trusts me like a brother.”

“I hope so,” Yulim said. “What did he say?”

“He confirmed what we already suspected. REDI is trying to apprehend the defectors and bring them back to look over the missile data.”

Yulim continued to frown. He lit another cigarette and took a nervous puff.

“That could pose a problem,” he said. “Especially if they manage to bring the team back before we’ve made our move.”

“What are the chances of that?” Jin countered. “Slim to none, I would say.”

“Don’t be so certain,” Yulim cautioned. “Kim Jong-il is determined to make sure the missiles are operational. I’m sure he’s sent his best men to the States.”

Jin shook his head. “Our Great Leader waited too long to play this hand. Even if they do get their hands on Shinn and the others, it will be too late for them to make a difference. Trust me, by the time the REDI agents return, with or without the defectors, we will already be in control. If anything, REDI is doing us a favor. If they bring back the Kanggye Team, we’ll take them into custody and have them do the verification for us. If we can prove that the missiles are functional, their price will only go up.”

The major mulled over Yulim’s words and decided the man had a point. “It’s a win-win situation for us.”

“Exactly,” Yulim said. “Our biggest concern isn’t the defectors. We just need to make sure we can keep a lid on our plans until it’s time to carry them out. If all goes well on that front, Kim Jong-il will never know what hit him. The country will be ours.”

WHEN LIM NA-LI WAS awakened by the sound of laughter in the other room, it took her a moment to remember where she was. Then she recognized Yulim’s voice and it all came back, bringing tears to her eyes.

When she’d been singled out after she and her parents had been transported to the concentration camp, she’d braced herself for the worst, but nothing had prepared her for the brutal assault Yulim had subjected her to. She was so sore that even the slightest movement was painful.

Lying beneath the satin sheets in the lieutenant corporal’s oversize bed, Na-Li fought back a sob. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back to sleep, anything to blot out the memory of Yulim’s rough touch and the rancid, smoke-tinged smell of his breath. But even when she pulled a pillow over her ear she could still hear the men talking and Yulim’s voice was like a prod, taunting her.

Finally she tossed the pillow aside and struggled out of the bed and wrapped a towel around her waist as she went to the window, which looked out on the mountains. The view was breathtaking, but the young woman spent little time dwelling on it. She wanted to escape, to climb out the window and just run. She didn’t care what happened to her. She just wanted to get away from her tormentor. As she feared, however, there were two soldiers posted at the rear of the bungalow. They stood only a few yards from the window, backs to her, carbines at the ready. Na-Li knew they would apprehend her before she was even halfway out the window, in which case she would have to face Yulim’s rage for attempting to escape.

Stepping back from the window, Na-Li was overcome by a sense of futility surpassed only by her morbid curiosity at what the men in the other room might be discussing. Against her better judgment, she found herself moving to the bedroom door, then leaning to one side so that she could press her ear close to the wood. It took only a moment for the men’s voices to become more than a rumbling drone. Now she could hear what they were saying. And the more she listened, the more she began to tremble. No, she thought to herself. It wasn’t possible.

Yulim and the other man were plotting to overthrow the Great Leader!

With horrified fascination, Na-Li continued to eavesdrop, trying to piece together the details the men were discussing and commit them to memory. She had no idea what she might do with the information she was overhearing, and there was a part of her that began to fear that Yulim would remember she was in the room and have her killed just as a precaution.

Moments later, it looked as if her fears were about to be realized. She heard Yulim mention her to the other man, but he did it laughingly, with no concern that she might pose a security risk. She was his plaything. No more, no less, and no threat.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Airspace over Southern California

“With everything going on, I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” John Kissinger told Mack Bolan.

The two men were on a Laughlin-bound private jet the FBI had charted back in Los Angeles. The Bureau had stepped into the picture as soon as the focus had shifted from the Killboys’ drug-running to their likely involvement with the men being held responsible for the death of Yong-Im Hyunsook. There were two G-men riding in the plane, across from Bolan and Kissinger. Jayne Bahn had sweet-talked her way aboard, as well, and was sitting across the aisle from the Stony Man operatives, cell phone pressed to one ear as she conferred with her colleagues back at Inter-Trieve’s West Coast headquarters in San Francisco.

“No thanks necessary,” Bolan told Kissinger. “I was happy to help out. How’s that ankle doing?”

“Feels okay as long as I’m sitting down,” Kissinger said. “They said if I keep my weight off it for a few days I’d be fine.”

“Knowing you, that’s not going to happen,” Bolan said with a grin. “My money says you wind up ripping loose those stitches in your arm, too.”

“No bet,” Kissinger replied. Thinking back to the firefight that had left him wounded, he went on. “I just wish we could’ve gotten them all. I mean, you gotta figure those two who drove off before the raid are the ones that whacked that guy in the valley.”

“We’ll catch up with them,” Bolan said evenly.

“I hope so.”

Bahn had gotten off the phone in time to hear the tail end of men’s conversation. “I hope you’re not saying it’s my fault they’re still on the loose,” she told Kissinger. “Hell, even if I’d been close enough to stop them, it would’ve tipped off the others and we wouldn’t have stumbled onto this whole hit-squad thing.”

“Nobody’s blaming you for anything,” Kissinger assured the woman. “Matter of fact, you kept another one of them from getting away. That makes you woman of the hour.”

“A lot of good that did,” Bahn scoffed. “Two hours of interrogation and the punk didn’t give up a thing.”

“Well, he’s just lucky we got called away,” Kissinger said. “Two minutes in the I-room alone with him and I’d have had him talking.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Bolan intervened.

Bahn smiled at Bolan. “Come on, he’s just flirting with me, that’s all.”

“In your dreams,” Kissinger said, suppressing a grin.

As the plane carried the group over the arid desolation of the Mojave Valley, the head of the FBI detail, Ed Scanlon, strode up from the rear of the plane. He was a tall, lean man in his midforties, wearing an off-the-rack suit and well-scuffed Oxford shoes.

“Got a wee bit of good news,” Scanlon announced, as he flipped his cell phone closed. “We went another round with that gang-banger and got him to spill. He confirmed what we’ve been expecting all along. One of the guys who rode off just before the raid is just the baby brother of a Killboy we’ve got chilling the morgue. The other guy’s a major player, though.”

“REDI?” Bahn guessed.

Scanlon eyed the woman, surprised. “You know about them?”

She nodded. “It’s the closest thing North Korea has to our CIA. Espionage, wet work. You name it, they get the call.”

“That’s about the size of it.” Scanlon continued, “Anyway, this guy’s name is Hong Sung-nam, and he’s bad news. We’ve got his crew linked to a handful of assassinations over in Asia, and last time we checked he was still over there.”

“Obviously you’ll need to update your records,” Bahn taunted.

“So it would seem,” Scanlon conceded. “We don’t know how he slipped stateside, but according to our stoolie, he showed in L.A. with a heroin shipment about a month ago and insinuated himself into the gang. Got the tattoos and everything. Apparently there were concerns that the Killboys needed more supervision so they’d spend less time butting heads with rival gangs and more time pushing the product. Of course, somewhere along the line he was rounding up info on these nuke defectors. And as long as he’s on the loose, we gotta figure he’s gonna work his way down that list you guys found.”

“Which means unless our raid scared him off, he’s probably on his way to Nevada,” Kissinger surmised. “Just like us.”

Scanlon nodded. “DEA’s selling that raid you were in on as strictly a drug bust. Hopefully Hong’ll buy it and stick to his game plan. We’ve got California Highway Patrol on the lookout for him, but if he’s worth his salt he’ll be able to evade any spot checks on the highways. I think our best bet’ll be to nab him when he tries to go after his next target.”

“If I remember rightly,” Bolan recalled, “the next guy on that list lived in Vegas, not Laughlin.”

“Good memory,” Scanlon said. “We’re changing our plans accordingly. You guys wanna play along?”

“What do you have in mind?” Bahn asked.

“Well,” Scanlon replied, “judging from how the three of you went gangbusters during that raid, I’m thinking you’d rather see some action instead of sniffing around Laughlin for this guy who’s third on the list.”

“You get points for flattery,” Bahn countered, “but you’re going to have to cough up more specifics.”

Bolan figured he knew where this was going and told Scanlon, “You want us in Vegas instead.”

“Bingo,” Scanlon said. “We’ve got the defector there under lock and key, but we figure if we plant a look-alike at his digs along with some backup, REDI’ll come in light and we’ll be able to get the upper hand on them.”

“And you want us for the backup,” Kissinger guessed.

“At least part of it,” Scanlon said. “We’ll have a crew there, but we’re spread thin looking for the Laughlin guy at the same time, so a few extra bodies couldn’t hurt.”

“Works for me,” Bahn said. “I just talked with my people and I’m green-lighted to follow through and see where this takes us.”

Bolan quickly weighed his options. Barbara Price had already asked him and Kissinger to help with the search in Laughlin, but Scanlon had been right in pegging him as someone who preferred the more proactive course. Fortunately his standing as a Stony Man operative was such that he could unilaterally change his plan of attack as developments dictated. He turned to Kissinger.

“How about if we split up,” he suggested. “You can take Laughlin and give that ankle a breather.”

“While you have all the fun?” Kissinger retorted. “I don’t think so.”

“Look, before this is over you’ll have more chances to jump into the fray.” Bolan nudged the aluminum crutches Kissinger had propped against the seat next to him. “You might as well give yourself a chance to recuperate.”

Kissinger thought it over, then nodded. “All right, all right. Laughlin it is.”

Bolan turned back to Scanlon. “Count me in.”

“Same here,” Bahn chimed in.

Kissinger stared at the woman bounty hunter, then grinned at Bolan. “Looks like I bailed just in time. Good luck, buddy. You’re going to have your hands full.”

CHAPTER NINE

Laughlin, Nevada

Although the casinos in Laughlin were set along the banks of the Colorado River, the town’s population, for the most part, lived a few miles inland, just west of a huge, coal-burning power plant that today, like most days, disgorged a steady plume of dark smoke from its towering exhaust chimneys. Randall Howland, a thirty-year veteran of the FBI, had spent most of the morning choking on the smoke as he maintained surveillance on the home of Li-Roo Kohb, one-time propellant expert for the Kanggye nuclear team. Howland had parked his nondescript Chevy sedan on the shoulder of a crestline road overlooking the defector’s neighborhood. Another two agents were biding their time downhill in a second car parked just past the stop sign where Li-Roo’s street intersected with Casino Drive. They’d been on stakeout now for the better part of three hours, waiting for the defector to return home or, better yet, for a sign of the REDI crew that was supposed to be in town looking to kill Li-Roo or at least abduct him and drag him back home to North Korea.

Howland was beginning to think they’d begun their stakeout too late. Maybe, he thought, the reason the man hadn’t answered the door earlier was because he was lying dead inside his house, already taken out by the same men who’d killed his colleague, Yong-Im Hyunsook, back in Los Angeles. That, or maybe the scientist had already been abducted. In any event, Howland had had his fill of twiddling his thumbs and breathing the exhaust from the power plant. Reaching inside his car, he keyed the dash mike and contacted his colleagues down the hill.

“This is getting us nowhere,” he told the others. “I say we go back to Li-Roo’s place and invite ourselves in.”

There was a moment’s hesitation before the driver of the second car replied, “Done. We’ll meet you there.”

Howland got into his car and drove down to Casino Drive, then circled around the power plant to Yancy Drive. Li-Roo Kohb lived halfway down the block in a small, twenty-year-old starter home set back on a small plot of land that, like most of the other residences on the street, had forsaken lawns in favor of cacti, succulents and other drought-resistant plants capable of withstanding Laughlin’s brutally hot, arid summers. There were a few people out, some tending to plants, others lazily basking on their front porches in the late-afternoon heat. One of Howland’s colleagues had already gotten out of the other car and was approaching the defectors’ next-door neighbor, holding out his FBI badge. The man’s partner, Agent Sandra Pearle, was standing next to the car, which had been parked two houses down from Li-Roo’s home.