Full Force and Effect

72

Five minutes later Hwang went back to his office and explained to his staff that he would drive himself back to the hotel and then go visit his parents. They assumed the director’s parents were home in Pyongyang, and he did nothing to dispel their assumption.

While the director was taking care of this and other matters, Yao was in the geology lab with Helen Powers. They were alone, which was a good thing for them both, because Adam decided he would speak English.

He didn’t think she would think much of her chances if he told her he was a Chinese spy. She put together on her own who he worked for the moment he dropped his accent fully. “Dr. Powers. Do you really want to get out of here?”

“I… you are American?”

“You tell anyone and I will be killed. You will be suspected, at best, and stood up against a wall right next to me, at worst. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Why the blazes would I tell anyone? You think I like these people? They are mad bastards.”

“Hwang and I are leaving, and if you stay, you will be in danger.”

“Let me get my purse.”

Adam drove behind the wheel of a silver Pyeonghwa Pronto, Hwang’s seven-passenger SUV. Hwang sat next to him in the front, and in the middle row sat his wife and two small children. They were all confused, but they were quiet, because they were obedient, and Hwang told them everything was fine.

Dr. Helen Powers sat in the third row, doing her best to keep her red hair under a black cap so it didn’t draw any more attention to the vehicle than necessary as they drove through the North Korean backcountry.

As they neared the cottage, Hwang spoke in Mandarin to Adam.

“Go-you.” Hwang said it softly.

Adam turned to Hwang. He wasn’t sure what the Korean was talking about, or even if he’d heard correctly. “Go-you” meant “dogs” in Mandarin. He knew the Korean word, so he checked.

“Gae?”

“Yes.” Hwang continued in Mandarin. “Dogs.”

“What about dogs?”

“You said Choi would have me shot. You are wrong. He wouldn’t have had me shot. He would have fed me to starving dogs.”

Adam turned back to the road. He squeezed the steering wheel tighter. “We’ve heard about that. Most of our analysts thought it was just an exaggerated rumor.”

“No rumor. General Gang of foreign intelligence was killed in this manner last year.”

Mother of God. “How do you know?”

“Because General Ri told me. He was there.” After a pause he said, “Ri killed himself and his family so they would not suffer the same fate.”

Yao shuddered. He wished like hell he had some way to talk to Acrid Herald control and let them know he was on the way. They said they’d be watching from above, which meant satellites, probably the KH-12 that Adam knew monitored North Korea, but now that he was picking up strays along the way, he could only hope the helicopter they were sending was big enough to handle everyone.

They arrived at the cottage at seven p.m. It wasn’t remote at all, just one of hundreds of cookie-cutter little homes with postage-stamp fenced yards that overlooked the coastline in a massive complex. A cool wind blew in from Korea Bay, and the moon provided enough light for Hwang to pick out the right unit. While many of North Korea’s citizens starved, a few thousand elite owned vacation cottages. Hwang’s family was one of the “haves,” and while it didn’t look like much to Yao, in this country it was an unfathomable luxury to ninety-nine percent of the population.

Adam said, “Okay, just like we planned it. Quickly. Don’t answer questions, just get them moving. No luggage. Just the clothes on their backs and any medicine they need in the next twenty-four hours.”

Hwang just nodded.

Everyone stayed in the vehicle except for Hwang, who climbed out and went to the front door. He knocked, and waited.

Adam rolled down the driver’s-side window. He was only twenty-five feet from Hwang at the door, and he wanted to listen to how Hwang told his presumably elderly parents that they had to leave right this minute.

An elderly man and woman stepped out and onto the stoop in front of the door. Hwang’s father put his hand on his son’s shoulder. He leaned on unsteady legs. Adam thought the old man was just using his son for balance, but quickly he realized he was leaning close to his son to say something.

“What is it, Father? We must hurry.”

This worried Adam. How would the old man know they were going somewhere?

The father mumbled something. Adam couldn’t understand, and he saw Hwang couldn’t make it out, either.

“What, Father?”

“Disgrace. You are a disgrace! You bring dishonor on us!”

Adam was moving in a half-second, opening the car door, leaping out into the little driveway, running up to the door. “Hwang!”

The old lady shouted now. “The Dae Wonsu will have his revenge for your deceit!” She threw a bony, weak fist at her son’s face. It glanced off him, but he reacted as if he had been decked by a heavyweight.

“Mother!” Hwang shouted in shock.

Adam pushed between them as both the old man and the old lady began throwing blows. Most of them hit Adam on his back. None of them hurt at all.

“Let’s go!” he said in Mandarin.

“Traitor!” Hwang senior shrieked. “Working with the jung gug-ui!” The Chinese.

Yao saw the tears on Hwang’s face, the incomprehension that his own parents had turned against him.

But he wouldn’t leave.

Adam shouted, “They turned you in! We have to get out of here!”

Hwang just stood on the little stoop; his parents were still within arm’s reach and they swung and scratched at him. Adam fought them both off with one arm, but he’d taken a blow just over the eye and the old couple seemed to grow stronger with adrenaline. If he had his way he’d deck them both, just drop them with a couple of jabs, but he knew that would just anger Hwang and jeopardize a mission that already had enough going against it.

“Forget them!” he shouted at Hwang. He saw Hwang’s wife climbing out of the SUV now. He yelled at her in Korean. “Get back in the car!”

“No!” Hwang cried openly now, his face tight, eyes squinted but tears managing to find their way through and down his face.

“Hwang!” Adam shouted. “Your children! Min-hee and Du-ho won’t stand a chance if we don’t run right now!”

The fifty-four-year-old Korean turned to Adam, opened his eyes a little. Finally he turned and started back to the car.

Adam took one last look at the parents. They were impossibly small and rail-thin, but the anger in their eyes made them look like wild animals.

Hwang walked across the driveway, his parents running after him. Adam got behind Hwang to where he couldn’t see him, then spun around with his fist balled and high. He had no plans on beating an eighty-year-old couple, even though he thought it likely their actions might well get him, this family, and the Australian geologist killed.

He jumped back behind the wheel and jammed the vehicle in reverse, backed out of the little dirt drive, and put it in gear. He stomped on the accelerator, and the four-cylinder shot dirt and fishtailed, then raced on.

Headlights appeared on the tiny road ahead of him. Multiple sets of high beams. Adam kept racing right toward them as fast as he could, hoping like hell they would move out of the way. At twenty yards he could tell they were troop trucks, so he swerved off the road and began crashing through the low fences of the tiny postage-stamp yards in front of the cottages. One after the other he smashed through wooden and wire fences, then bounced up into gardens, back down the other side, and then crashed through the next stretch of fence.

As they passed the trucks he heard the booming cracks of rifle fire. Everyone in the SUV screamed for their lives, but the vehicle bounced on, reached the end of the neighborhood, and peeled hard to the right, accelerating down a hill.

“You called your parents! You told them we were coming. Didn’t you?” Adam asked.

Hwang just nodded, tears streaming down his face. Behind him his wife screamed at him, and his kids were on the verge of hyperventilation. Dr. Powers was doing everything she could to calm the children, but she didn’t speak their language, so it was an impossible task.

A pair of helicopters flew low overhead.

“Hold on!” Adam said it in Korean, then jacked the wheel to the right.

The mud and rocks slapped the undercarriage of the vehicle as it bounced down a hill in the dark.

He shouted to Hwang. “Where does this road go?”

“It leads to a stream. Straight ahead at the bottom of the hill.”

“How deep?”

Hwang thought. “At this time of the year it is very shallow. Almost dry in places.”

Adam didn’t much like his plan, but he felt he had no choice. He reached up and flipped off the headlights.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hoping they don’t have night vision!”

He fought the strong urge to turn the lights back on, and the even stronger urge to slow down. Finally he felt the hill bottom out, and he turned to the right, away from the ocean to his left. He slowed a little, but kept as much speed as he dared. The SUV bounced wildly over the rocks in the dry streambed.

Adam saw the lights of the helicopters in the distance as the SUV drove on. The helos would follow the road, looking for the SUV, and as long as Adam and the others stayed at the bottom of the little valley, moving in the dry streambed, and as long as there was cover from the flora above them, they would be safe.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked Hwang.

The North Korean was still crying, but he nodded distractedly. Though Hwang’s family was in the car with him, Adam saw that the man felt totally alone after his parents turned on him.

Adam said, “You had to do this. Choi was going to kill everyone in your family.”

Hwang turned and pointed at Adam angrily. “You are an inferior jung gug-ui! You do not say the family name of the Dae Wonsu!”

Christ, Yao thought. This one is brainwashed like all the others.