Black Rose

CHAPTER 2

Elizabeth Harker had been hand-picked for her job as Director of the Project by President Rice. Rice was determined that he wasn't going to be one of those leaders who ended up like the fairy tale emperor with no clothes. It was easy to find people who told him what he wanted to hear, harder to find someone who'd tell him what he needed to hear. He'd found that person in Elizabeth. Not many people knew who she was or what her unit did. The Project operated in the shadows, as much out of public view as the dark side of the moon.

Nick Carter and Selena Connor sat on the couch in front of her desk. Nick had spent years in Marine Recon and led the Project's field team, all Special Forces vets except Selena. She'd come from the civilian world, with a unique mix of abilities that balanced the hard military background of the others.

Selena had a gift for ancient languages and spoke a dozen modern languages with ease. She knew martial arts and had used them more than once since Harker had recruited her. Since she'd joined the Project, she'd begun to pick up some of the lethal skills Nick and the others had spent years refining in the military.

The third member of the team was Lamont Cameron. He sat in a chair near the couch. His looks were marred by a thin, pink scar that stood out against his coffee-colored skin. It ran over his right eye and down the side of his nose, a souvenir of Iraq. Lamont was a former Navy SEAL. He had blue eyes that missed little, a genetic gift from his Ethiopian ancestors.

"Have you heard anything from Ronnie?" Elizabeth asked.

Ronnie Peete was the fourth member of her field team. He'd been badly wounded during a recent mission in the Philippines and gone back to Arizona after leaving the hospital. He'd told Nick he was going home to the Navajo reservation for a healing ceremony. That had been two weeks ago.

"I talked to him yesterday," Nick said. "He didn't say when he was coming back."

"All right. Bring him up to date when he gets here."

Elizabeth got to the point of the meeting.

"What do you know about North Korea's biological warfare program?" she said.

Nick rubbed the scar on his left ear, where a Chinese bullet had clipped the earlobe. His eyes were smoky gray, with gold flecks in them. His black hair was cut short. He was six feet tall and weighed in at just under two hundred. He wore a gray jacket that matched his eyes. A slight bulge under the jacket signaled a shoulder holster. Everyone in the Project went armed at all times.

"I don't know anything about it," he said, "but it figures they'd have one. I hope you're not thinking of sending us to North Korea."

"No," she said. "I'm sending you to Hong Kong."

"That's comforting."

"We have time to hit the malls?" Lamont asked. "I always wanted one of those silk suits."

"It's too early for the jokes, Lamont."

"Sorry, Director."

Elizabeth tapped a file on her desktop with her finger. "This is a transcript of an NSA intercept between the head of North Korea's bio warfare program and the Vice-Chairman of their National Defense Commission. He's second in command to the Supreme Leader. Their top general."

"What were they talking about?" Nick asked.

"There's been a security breach at their biological weapons lab."

"What kind of a breach?" Selena asked.

She wore dark blue slacks and a loose top that matched. A SIG-Sauer .40 caliber pistol in a quick draw holster at her waist added a black accent to her casual look. The outfit complimented her violet eyes and reddish-blonde hair. Selena was a woman who drew second looks wherever she went.

Harker said, "The People's Democratic Republic is working with some very nasty bugs. You know about bubonic plague?"

"I know it killed a lot of people back in the Middle Ages. Don’t you get lumps under your arms and in the groin? Black spots?"

"That's right. It takes over the lymph nodes and destroys the immune system, then spreads to the organs. Death is usually within one to two weeks if left untreated. There's a septicemic variety that bleeds under the skin and turns parts black. That's why it was called the Black Death in the Middle Ages. It affects coagulation. You get to watch your fingers turn black and rot before you die."

Lamont looked at his hands.

"How is it spread?" Nick asked.

"Usually by a flea bite but there are other ways as well. There's a pneumonic form that infects through a cough or a sneeze. One of the things that keeps the World Health Organization up at night is the fear that a plague epidemic would go airborne."

Harker paused and picked up her pen, a black Mont Blanc. She tapped it three times on her desk. "Our North Korean friends have developed a super strain of airborne plague. We think they weaponized it with aerosols."

Nick shook his head. "What’s the matter with these people?" He looked at her. "You’re going to tell me some of this stuff has gone missing, aren’t you?"

She nodded. "That's what the conversation we intercepted was about. The Korean lab is a Level 4 bio hazard facility. That's the highest level of containment. Ten days ago a technician let several men into the laboratory. They killed her and the guards and took containers with samples of the new bacteria. Then they planted charges and left. It was a well-executed op, military in precision. When the balloon went up the lab was destroyed and part of the mountain collapsed on top of it. That's the only good thing about this. The People's Republic won't be making any more of that bug for a while."

"How do they know what happened if everything was destroyed?"

"Video records of the whole thing. Security cameras recorded images from the containment labs in a separate building."

Nick waited.

"I met with the President and DCI Hood this morning," Elizabeth said. "They want us to handle a delicate mission."

"We don't usually do delicate," Nick said.

"It's a political bomb. Rice doesn't want to use Langley or any of the regular JSOC units, in case it doesn't work out."

Nick sighed. "What does he want us to do?"

"We need to know exactly what the North Koreans had. The chief scientist of Pyongyang's biological warfare program is a man named Kim Jung-Hun. He almost never leaves North Korea but he's attending an international conference in Hong Kong this weekend. He wants to defect. In return for asylum he's willing to give us details about their program."

"Whoa," Nick said, "that's a big fish."

"That's exactly what he is and the President wants to land him," Elizabeth said.

Nick said, "You want us to go pick him up."

Elizabeth nodded. "It's not going to be easy. I'm sending you and Lamont. Kim will be well guarded at all times. We only have a two day window and then he'll be back in North Korea. You'll have support for the extraction. But if something goes wrong before that, you're on your own. I can't protect you."

"How are we supposed to get him out?"

"A boat will be available for you courtesy of MI-6, once you have Kim."

"And how are we supposed to scoop him up?"

Elizabeth smiled. "That's up to you, Nick. Use your imagination."