Ghost Ship

THIRTY-EIGHT

“They’re gone,” Kurt said. “They took off down some tunnel. Now’s our chance.”

He made his way to the door and unlatched the panel on the back of the trailer. Hopping out, he took a quick look around. There were only dead men left in the control room. Dead men and blinking computers that Calista had tampered with. If he guessed right, anyone watching the room from a remote location would get nothing but a report that said Situation normal.

“We’d better arm ourselves,” he suggested, grabbing a pistol from one of the dead men. Joe crouched by one of the other bodies and did the same. Then they left the control room to take a quick look around.

The space was huge, the size of an aircraft hangar. On one side, the big rig that had hauled them sat alone on an octagonal platform. Stripped of the container that had once been on its back, it looked small, out of place.

“Reminds me of a turntable in the railroad yard,” Joe said. Kurt agreed. He looked up. An empty shaft, matching the dimensions and shape of the platform, ran upward into the darkness. The walls of the shaft were notched, and huge wheeled gears that must have intersected these notches sprouted from four of the platform’s eight sides.

“I’d guess those gears move it up and down,” Joe said. “Like an incline railway, only vertical.”

Kurt had to agree. “That explains how we got down here, but it doesn’t explain why.”

Looking for the answer to that question, he moved to the horizontal tunnel, the one Calista and her friend had vanished down on a silent tram. It seemed to run on to infinity, colored in bands of white and gray where the overhead lights and the shadows between them alternated.

“What do you make of all this?” Joe asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kurt admitted, “but I’m getting the idea that Than Rang isn’t quite as neutral as Colonel Lee and the CIA seem to believe.”

“You think this tunnel goes under the DMZ?”

“It’s the only conclusion that makes any sense,” Kurt said. “For one thing, we’re right up against the border. For another, the North has been digging tunnels under the DMZ for years. I can’t remember how many have been found, but there are at least three or four major ones. Most were smaller and designed for infiltration, but supposedly the largest of them was capable of handling a division of men and light equipment in an hour or so. From the pictures I’ve seen, even that has nothing on this place.”

Joe nodded. “I thought the South was always listening for signs of more tunneling. Shouldn’t they have heard this thing being excavated?”

“We’re directly under a landfill,” Kurt pointed out. “With all those bulldozers moving around, not to mention the cranes, the dump trucks, and the compacting equipment, this place is a constant source of noise. I’m guessing that any stray sounds detected from this area could easily be written off as coming from the landfill. Beyond that, we’re down here pretty deep. That has a tendency to muffle noise as well.”

“Gotta hand it to them, the landfill’s a perfect cover. Even gives them a place to hide all the dirt and rock they had to excavate.”

Kurt nodded but didn’t reply. He was gazing down the long tunnel and had caught sight of movement. There was no sound like a subway train screeching down the rails, but something was definitely headed their way.

“Take cover,” Kurt said.

He and Joe crouched down and readied their guns as the approaching target continued to race toward them. It had no wheels or cables. It simply seemed to be flying.

“Maglev,” Joe said, using the short term for “magnetic levitation.” “That explains the high-voltage generators.”

“Another way to keep the operation quiet,” Kurt said. “It’s almost silent.”

The car slowed rapidly the last hundred yards and was almost motionless as it exited the tunnel and slid onto a platform similar to the one their shipping container now rested on. As the sound of the humming generator waned, the new arrival dropped several inches, settling onto the platform with a surprisingly dull thud.

Kurt waited but no one came out.

“Empty car?” Joe guessed.

Suspicious of the whole scenario, Kurt crept up to the square cart and looked over the edge. “No passengers,” he said. “But it’s not empty.”

He reached inside and scooped up a handful of the cargo. “Pellets,” he said. “Extremely light.”

Joe took a quick look, rubbing one of the pellets between his fingers. “Titanium,” he said. “Not fully processed yet but halfway there.”

“I think I get it now,” Kurt said.

“Get what?”

“Than Rang’s played-out mines that are producing three times what they did a decade before… His alliance with the shadowy figures in the North… He’s salting his own mines,” Kurt said. “The generals send him half-processed titanium that he ships to a processor as if they came from his own mine and he sends them computer hackers, high-tech supplies, and probably a steady diet of cold hard cash in return. The North Koreans get technology and access to markets the UN sanctions prevent them from touching, and Than Rang gets cheap ore at fire-sale prices.”

As if in response to the arrival of the ore-bearing car, a series of yellow lights began to flash around the base of the platform on which the shipping container had been placed — the one Kurt and Joe had been riding in with the high-tech servers.

“Last train to Clarksville,” Kurt said. “Let’s make sure we’re on it.”

He and Joe dashed for the open door of the shipping container, jumping inside just as the platform levitated upward. Kurt pulled the door shut and the container began to accelerate rapidly and smoothly. In seconds, they were moving fifty miles an hour, all without the slightest sound of machinery or even the grind of wheels on the road.

“Since we seem to be on the express train here,” Joe began, “I should probably ask what we’re going to do when we get to the other side.”

“My guess, we’ll either be entering a dead zone or an all-out firefight,” Kurt said.

“We could have waited for them to come back.”

“What if they plan to take another way out?”

“You got me there,” Joe said.

It wasn’t long before the big container began to slow. As it settled onto the receiving platform at the far end, it became clear there was no firefight in progress. A minute of silence rang in their ears before Kurt dared crack the rear door open.

A quick look revealed several dead soldiers in North Korean uniforms and no sign of fighting or alarms in sight.

Kurt and Joe hopped out of the container and did a quick survey. Nine men down. No sign of reinforcements. Ruthless and precise.

Oddly enough, the three hackers lay on their sides in the tram they’d come over in. They were not moving but didn’t appear to have been shot.

Joe shook one of them but got no response. “They look drugged to me,” he said. “They’re still breathing.”

“We can figure that out later.”

They followed the trail of bodies to a corridor, where they found an elevator. Joe was about to press the button when Kurt blocked his hand. “Let’s not announce our arrival.”

They pried the doors open and found a narrow elevator shaft. On the far side, a maintenance ladder traveled up a shallow, recessed channel that was carved into the wall.

Kurt counted five floors between them and the underside of the parked elevator car.

“What do you bet that’s where our friends are?” Kurt asked.

“Sounds like a place to start. We can’t search this whole complex.”

They moved into the elevator shaft and began climbing the ladder. Kurt went first. Joe braced the door to keep it open. It gave them a little light to work with and would make for a quicker getaway if they had to come down the ladder as well.

Climbing quickly, they passed the first two floors. As they cleared the third, Kurt heard a clink beneath him and then a dull metallic clatter as something fell down the shaft to the concrete below.

He looked down and saw Joe, holding on for dear life with one hand and clinging to a broken part of the ladder with another.

“What are you doing?”

Joe hooked the broken section of the ladder onto one of the rungs and climbed past it. “We’re in a lot of danger here, Kurt.”

“I don’t think anyone heard that.”

“I’m not worried about the guards,” Joe said, “I’m worried about North Korean construction practices. Have you looked at this concrete? It’s flaking away like a day-old croissant. I’m thinking they used way too much sand. And this rebar… It’s all rusted and loose.” As if to emphasize the point, Joe pulled on one of the bars and it came right out. “I say we make this quick before the whole place caves in on us.”

Kurt smiled. His friend was an engineer and a perfectionist. He would never allow such shoddy work on his watch.

“I’ll be sure to send a strongly worded letter to Kim Jong-un when we get home,” Kurt said. “ ‘Please construct your secret bases with better materials so we don’t get injured when infiltrating them. Otherwise, you’ll be hearing from our lawyers.’ ”

“I’m sure that’ll spur him to action,” Joe said.

By now they’d reached the elevator car. Kurt squeezed by it and climbed on top. He pried open the emergency escape panel and dropped in as quietly as possible. Joe followed. The door was already open. The equivalent of a hold switch was in the locked position.

Two more bodies lay in the hall, and for a moment the silence held. But as Kurt stepped forward, a commotion rang out at the far end. Multiple gunshots. A stun grenade going off. And then return fire from the silenced pistols of Calista and her partner.

Whatever trick had gotten them this far without resistance had apparently failed at the last moment. Alarms were now sounding throughout the complex.

“So much for the peace and quiet,” Joe said.

“Come on,” Kurt urged, running forward, headed straight for the sounds of the battle.