Eternity Base

Chapter 17

Major Pak Roh Kim read once more the message his radio operator had decoded twenty minutes ago. It was the longest message he had ever seen transmitted over high frequency radio in his twenty-one years with Special Forces. He was holding a complete operations plan for a new mission that was to commence immediately.

Pak’s face twisted in a sneer as he read the concept of operations. Those desk-bound fools in Kaesong! He looked up at the thatched roof of the hut that comprised his team’s headquarters. Pak was a small man, less than five and a half feet tall and weighing no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. He was the spitting image of Bruce Lee, the major difference being that Pak had actually killed many more men than the actor had ever simulated killing in his movies.

“Get me Lim,” he snapped at Kim Chong Man. As his executive officer scurried out to the airstrip, Pak leafed through the pages of the OPLAN, his mind trying to rationalize the words in front of him. This was going to be difficult, very difficult.

Pak had been in Angola for a year and a half now, advising the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government forces in their thirty year war against the UNITA rebels. In Pak’s personal opinion, the real reason he and his men were here was to gain combat experience. The MPLA would never defeat the rebels, especially since the Cubans had pulled out and run back to their island with their tails between their legs. Now one hundred and twenty North Korean Special Forces soldiers were supposed to do what thousands of Cubans hadn’t been able to accomplish.

Pak had run more than his share of classified missions, so he was no stranger to being awakened in the middle of the night and handed an OPLAN. This one, however, was different in several important aspects. The first was the fact that it was an operation outside of his immediate area of operations. The second was the strategic significance of the mission. It all looked very nice on paper, but implementation was going to require great sacrifices and effort.

Typical bureaucratic thinking, Pak snorted. This was the same type of thinking that had almost gotten him killed in a DMZ infiltration tunnel north of Seoul two years ago. He and his team should have been pulled out at the first sign of compromise, but indecision in the chain of command had left them in there long enough for the South Koreans to flood the tunnel. Pak shuddered as he remembered the torrent of water pouring in and the muffled screams of the men who didn’t make it out.

Lim stepped in and snapped a salute, breaking Pak out of his black reverie. “Captain Lim reporting as ordered, sir.”

Pak looked at the short man in the flight suit with unveiled disgust. “What is your aircraft’s range?”

Lim blinked. “It’s sixty-five hundred kilometers with a one-hour reserve, sir.”

“We need to go ninety-seven hundred kilometers.”

Lim stared nervously at the major. “Then we will have to refuel somewhere, sir.”

“If we had someplace to land and refuel, I would have told you that.” Pak’s voice was ice cold. “We need to travel ninety-seven hundred kilometers without refueling.”

‘That is impossible, sir.”

“Make it possible. You have one hour to be ready to leave.” Pak turned his gaze to his XO, who had come in behind the pilot. “Bring in the team and I will brief them.”

Sammy sat down with her back against the crate containing one of the bombs and watched Riley, who was examining a rifle. They had run a power line into the armory, and now the overhead lights worked, along with the heat. They’d spent the past two hours doing what Riley referred to as “what-if” work. Sammy was happy to stay busy.

Riley pointed up at the heater, which was blowing out warm air. “The weapons are sweating now, and when they get exposed again to subfreezing temperatures they’re going to freeze up.”

Sammy shrugged. “I don’t think my sister is too worried about that.”

Riley put down the rifle and sat across from her. “I have to agree with that.” He looked around. “I wish I had a beer. I suppose they didn’t put any alcohol down here because it would have frozen. I’m not too sure I would have liked living in a survival shelter without beer.”

“How could the government have lost track of these weapons?” Sammy asked, tapping the crate.

Riley sighed. “These bombs are either a closely guarded secret or a complete oversight. Crazy as it sounds, the latter is most likely the truth. If someone from the government knew about these things, there would have been some monitoring of this place.”

Sammy disagreed. “That man who showed up in St. Louis certainly was keeping very good tabs on this place. He must have gotten on to me either through SNN or from the data runs I made on the computer at the Center.”

Riley shrugged. “I don’t know. We have that name — Glaston. If we can find out who he worked for, then we’ll have some answers. I’m more worried right now about who tried to kill Swenson and trashed Vickers’s radio. If whoever it is works for the same people who sent that man to St. Louis, then they really have their act together. That’s why I wanted to prepare for the shit to hit the fan.”

“If we can get into the reactor itself, I think we ought to move the stuff we gathered into that,” Sammy suggested. “It would be an ideal place to hide.”

Riley nodded. “That’s a good idea. Let’s get back and join everyone else.”

They negotiated the corridors to the unit where the rest of the party was sleeping. As Sammy reached for the doorknob and started to push, Riley screamed “NO!” He grabbed her by the shoulders, rolling to the left, his body on top of hers as they hit the wooden planks on the corridor floor.

The sharp, devastatingly loud crack of an explosion split the air. Sammy felt a strong current of air rush by her and Riley, and she heard the sounds of splintering wood and tearing metal. Then came a brief moment of absolute silence until excited voices started from inside the unit.

Riley rolled off Sammy and sat up, his back against the wall, as the door opened and the rest of the party surged out into the hallway, Conner in the lead. “What happened?”

Sammy just shook her head, trying to clear her ears of the ringing. She turned to Riley for the answer. Riley pointed up, and everyone’s eyes followed. A scorched black mark on the ceiling and the remnants of a piece of wire were all that was visible. “Our saboteur has turned to more direct means to try and solve his problem. Someone put a Claymore mine up there and rigged it to blow when the door opened.”

“I have prepared the plane to fly ninety-seven hundred kilometers, sir.” Captain Lim stood underneath the massive nose of his plane.

“How?” No congratulations. Pak didn’t believe in them.

“Normal range is sixty-five hundred kilometers. If we also use the one-hour reserve fuel supply, our possible range is extended to seven thousand one hundred twenty-five kilometers. We will make the additional two thousand five hundred seventy-five kilometers by using three of the fuel bladders here at the airfield. I have loaded them on board, and we will hand pump the fuel from the bladders to the main tanks as we progress.”

Pak nodded. His narrow eyes watched the team members loading their gear on board the aircraft. They’d been instructed only to gather their equipment. Pak wanted to wait until they were in the air before fully briefing the team.

“May I inquire where we are going, sir?” Lim held up his flight charts. “I need to plan a route.”

“South.” Pak answered.

Lim frowned. “South, sir? To South Africa?”

“No. Straight south. Over the ocean.”

“But, with all due respect, sir, there’s nothing to the south.”

Pak turned his coal black eyes on the pilot, cutting him off. “You fly the plane, captain. Let me worry about everything else. We take off in ten minutes.”

Lim saluted stiffly and retreated into the belly of his plane. Pak stepped back and ran his eyes along the silhouette of the Soviet-made IL-18. It was an old plane, built in the late fifties. Four large propeller engines mounted on its wings reminded one of an old-style airliner. The Russians had dumped the obsolete plane on their so-called North Korean allies in exchange for desperately needed hard currency. The plane was the way Pak and his fellow commandos had traveled to Angola, and it was their only way out and back to North Korea. Taking the plane meant that the other Special Forces men would be stranded. Pak was sure the people in Kaesong hadn’t thought of that either, or if they had, they felt this mission was worth more than these men.

Kim snapped to attention before him. “All loaded, sir!”

Pak nodded. “Let us board.”

“But why try to kill you two? What would that accomplish?” Devlin’s eyes were riveted on the shattered wall of the next unit. The thousands of steel ball bearings projected by the mine had torn large gashes in the surface.

Riley held the remains of the igniting wire in his hands. “Desperation. Whoever it is tried to stop us from getting here by trying to kill our pilot. That failed. Then they tried to keep us from communicating our discovery by damaging the satellite radio. That failed when we used the equipment already down here.

“Now he — or she — has no choice but to somehow get rid of everyone here. They tried to start with Sammy and me. It was just luck that I saw the trip wire running from the top of the door.” He looked at Swenson. “You would be last, since that person needs you to fly out of here. Unless, of course, you’re the person. Or if whoever it is can pilot the plane.”

“But,” Devlin protested, “the base would still be here. And Atlanta has tapes.”

Riley looked at Conner. “Has SNN played those tapes on the air yet?”

She shook her head. “No. They’re waiting until we have the complete story.”

“If there’s a leak at SNN, it’s also possible that the tapes have been compromised.” Riley gave a twisted smile. “Not only can’t we trust anyone or any organization back in the real world, but we can’t trust each other here.”

“What do we do now?” Sammy asked.

“We stick together in groups of two or more,” Riley suggested. “If one half of a pair ends up dead, then we have to assume the live half is the culprit.”

Conner stood. “All right. I agree. From here on out no one goes anywhere alone. We will also have at least two people awake at any one time.”

“I also suggest we go to the arms room and see if any weapons are missing,” Riley said. “Whoever took that mine might have taken some other goodies that we don’t want to be walking into.”

Conner headed for the door. “Everyone goes.”

The old man was jogging slowly along the deserted beach, leaving a trail of footprints just above the surf line. His head was slightly bowed, the sparse white hair reflecting the setting sun. His head cocked slightly as the sound of helicopter blades crept over the sand, but his feet kept their steady rhythm.

A shadow flashed over him and a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter flitted by, less than thirty feet above the ground. The man’s feet finally came to a halt as the helicopter flared, kicking up sand. The old man covered his eyes as the wheels touched and two men in unmarked khaki hopped off.

They ran over to him. There was no badge flashed or words spoken. They were all players and knew the rules. The old man allowed them to escort him onto the aircraft. It lifted and immediately sped off at maximum speed to the west, toward nearby Otis Air Force Base.

The incoming tide washed over the footsteps, and within twenty minutes all traces of the lone jogger were gone.