Ghost Ship

FORTY

With little time to waste, Joe eased Kurt to the ground and began to look around for options.

First, he raced over to the panel and checked the security video once more. The feed showed more North Korean soldiers picking their way through the piles of unconscious men who’d made the initial descent. Counting up from where he was, Joe could see that the new troops in their gas masks had reached the seventh floor and would soon reach the sixth, where the battle had occurred. He guessed they would clear that floor and the ones beneath it first before making their way to the bottom, but time was not on his side.

He studied the control panel, but it was an incomprehensible mess of Korean and flashing icons. No way he was going to be able to decipher that in time. He looked around, desperately seeking a mode of transportation that didn’t require a physicist to operate. In the dark corner to his left he saw something that might fit the bill.

“Of course,” he said. “The ore had to get down here somehow.”

There, sitting on a platform like the one in Than Rang’s underground base, was a big North Korean tractor trailer. It was a bulk hauler with an open top, more like a dump truck than the modern intermodal shipping containers Than Rang was using.

Joe ran to the cab, climbed in, and was ecstatic to find the keys in the ignition. “Thank God for the internal combustion engine,” he said, twisting the key and listening to the sweet sound of the rumbling diesel coming to life. Forcing it into the lowest gear, Joe managed to get the truck moving and eased it over to where Kurt lay on the floor.

Stopping the truck and jumping out, Joe picked up his friend, carried him to the passenger’s side, and hauled him onto the tattered vinyl of the old bench seat in the cab of the truck. As he settled, Kurt began to thrash around a bit, almost as if he was trying to swim, but then he slumped against the seat and went quiet once again.

Joe climbed back into the cab on the driver’s side and slammed the door.

“Don’t worry, amigo,” he said, putting the truck in gear. “You just enjoy your power nap. I’ll get us out of here. And when you wake up, we’re going to have a long talk about the kind of women you rescue and the kind you leave behind. Because clearly no one has explained the difference to you yet.”

As Joe spoke, he maneuvered the steering wheel and managed to get the behemoth of a truck pointing down the maglev tunnel toward freedom. Pressing the accelerator brought a roar from the engine and began filling the tunnel with thick black exhaust. The truck moved forward and was soon picking up speed.

He hadn’t gone too far when gunshots rang out from behind. From the cab of the rig, all Joe heard was the ping of ricochets bouncing off the thick walls of the truck bed and the boom of a tire exploding.

Trying not to think about the danger, Joe kept his foot on the throttle and continued to gain speed. Between the unmufflered exhaust, the noise of the big engine reverberating off the walls, and the old chassis bouncing and shaking on its leaf springs, the ride back to the south could not have been more opposite from the smooth, quiet ride in on the maglev tram.

Joe cycled through the gears, grinding every one of them. He began to laugh, enjoying the sound and the fury. It had to be a hundred twenty decibels or more. For the hell of it, he reached up and pulled the big rig’s horn, which echoed down the tunnel as it blared.

Soon enough, they were passing forty and then fifty miles per hour. Ahead Joe saw a problem. Every half mile or so in the tunnel was a choke point, where a reenforced concrete ring constricted the diameter of the tunnel. As he closed in on the first one, Joe was pretty confident the truck would fit. As it turned out, he was wrong. At fifty miles an hour, the metal top of the trailer clipped the roof, blasting chunks of concrete loose. It sounded like a bomb had gone off.

The second choke point was even narrower, but Joe didn’t slow down. More concrete was blasted free. This time a large section of the trailer’s side was torn off, clanking to the floor and tumbling loudly across it.

In the mirror, Joe saw the remnants of the twisted bed sticking out two feet to the side. It gave him an idea. Without slowing down, he eased over to the wall until the bent section of the truck bed was grinding against it, gouging a line in the wall, shedding sparks, and adding to the din. Eventually, the metal tore further until the whole side was ripped off and dragging behind the truck.

Joe glanced at Kurt. “You must really be out cold if this isn’t waking you up.”

Joe pulled on the horn lever once again and held it, letting it blare until his ears were hurting. Even then he kept sounding it. He wanted the world, and particularly the South Korean military, to know he was coming. The way Joe saw it, that was their only hope.

Seven miles away, in a listening post manned by the South Korean military, a young private named Jeong studied her monitors. The South Koreans had placed sound detection equipment all along the DMZ to listen for any possible underground incursion by the North.

From time to time they detected odd signals. Small earthquakes had been a problem, and the North Korean atomic bomb and other underground disturbances had sometimes triggered false readings, but nothing like what she was getting now. She called her supervisor over.

“Listen to this.”

He moved slowly, appearing unconcerned. “Something must be wrong with the system.”

Private Jeong shook her head. “I checked, sir. Plus, we’re detecting the sound at several stations. That is not a sign of malfunction.”

“Let me hear it.”

He plugged a headset into her console and listened as she turned up the sound. “Trucks,” he said. “Heavy trucks.” There was also a grinding noise that sounded like metal tank trucks.

The computer agreed, assessing the vibration as multiple heavy vehicles moving at high speed.

Suddenly alarmed, the supervisor picked up the phone and checked with a major in the post’s operations bunker. He told the major what he was hearing and then received more disturbing news. “We are witnessing sudden, frantic activity among North Korean units just on the other side of the DMZ.”

“Where?”

The coordinates relayed to him were alarming. North Korean units were on the move, near the very spot where the subterranean noise had originated.

“Calculate its direction and speed,” the supervisor ordered.

“Already done,” Private Jeong said.

“Show me.”

She tapped a button and the signal’s path appeared on the computer screen. It led straight from a suspected base in the North to a commercial site on the southern side of the DMZ.

“What is that place?” the supervisor asked.

Private Jeong was checking. “Landfill,” she replied. “DaeShan Landfill Number Four.”

The supervisor put two and two together. He could not believe what he was seeing. He called the major back and gave his assessment. “Confirmed large-scale subterranean incursion under way. Entry point must be in or around the DaeShan landfill. Recommend defense condition one. Immediate alert!”

Racing beneath the DMZ, Joe had no idea what forces he’d set in motion, but he hoped it would mean a warm welcome instead of a firefight through a group of armed thugs loyal to Than Rang.

As he entered the last third of the passageway, the grade ramped up just a bit and the truck began to slow. Instead of the light at the end of the tunnel, he saw the darkness of Than Rang’s underground transportation center. There was no sign of any resistance awaiting him, nor were there South Korean soldiers, which for the moment was probably a good thing.

It was a different story behind him. Vehicles were heading their way, catching up quickly. Based on the silence, he guessed they were running on the maglev system.

As one of the trams raced up beside him, Joe spun the wheel to the right and knocked the tram off the centerline of its magnetic track. Deprived of its support, the tram crashed to the ground amid a shower of sparks.

Gunshots rang out from the second vehicle that was also closing in from directly behind. Once again the bulk of the big truck protected them.

This time Joe simply stomped on the brakes. The big rig skidded to a stop amid a shreik of squealing tires and a cloud of blue smoke. Unable to adjust its speed as quickly, the second tram rear-ended the truck with jarring impact.

Their pursuers now successfully dealt with, Joe put the truck back in gear and began to accelerate, working through the gears and heading into the homestretch. The truck labored on the slight upward grade and chugged into the loading bay at the end of the tunnel, bumping the ore car filled with the titanium pellets, which dumped out and spread all across the floor.

As the sound of a thousand marbles rolling in all directions ceased, Joe peeked out of the truck. There was no one there to greet them. No angry brutes with drawn weapons. No sign of Calista and the hackers. And still no soldiers.

Joe looked back down the tunnel. The North Koreans had given up the chase. He could see them running the other way. He guessed they were not interested in getting caught on the wrong side of the border.

Joe looked over at Kurt. “We made it,” he said. “And just like the last time, you missed the whole thing.”

Joe considered looking for a stairwell but was not interested in lugging Kurt up twenty flights. Instead, he drove over and parked next to the octagonal platform they’d originally descended on.

He parked the truck, pulled Kurt from the passenger’s side, and found the controls. With the flick of a switch, he engaged the power system and moved the control lever upward from the neutral position. The incline gearing came to life and began to turn, and the platform began to rise slowly.

As they went up, Joe pulled out his phone, hoping he would get a signal before they reached the top. No such luck. In fact, the phone was acting weird as if it was being jammed. When the slowly rising platform finally reached the surface, Joe found out why.

Thirty Korean soldiers were waiting for him with weapons drawn. Humvees with .50 caliber machine guns were arranged in a semicircle around them. A spotlight snapped on, blinding Joe. Shouts that needed no translation told Joe to put up his hands, which he had already done.

A pair of soldiers rushed over and forced him to his knees.

“I’m an American,” Joe said.

To Joe’s right, another soldier had a rifle aimed at Kurt.

“He’s injured!” Joe shouted. “He needs a doctor.”

More shouts came his way.

“We’re American,” Joe replied. “We’re on your side. We’re operating undercover. For Colonel Lee of the National Intelligence Service.”

No response.

“CIA,” Joe shouted, hoping they knew the acronym.

With the spotlight on his face, they could clearly see that he was not Korean. A quick discussion was held, and Joe and Kurt were cuffed, thrown in the back of one of the Humvees, and driven off.

As they pulled out of the warehouse, Joe got a firsthand look at the effectiveness of his plan. South Korean helicopters, armed with missiles and spotlights, were circling the landfill. Several others were patrolling down the line of the DMZ, looking for invading troops or infiltration units of the North Korean Army.

In addition to the helicopters, soldiers were everywhere. And as they took the road out, Joe saw Abrams tanks moving into position, while a flight of F-16s flashed overhead in full afterburner.

Joe looked for the lights of Seoul, but the city had gone dark in response to the expected invasion.

“Hmm,” Joe whispered to himself. “Maybe that plan of mine worked a little too well.”

They were taken to a military base and quickly separated, Kurt whisked off to the infirmary, Joe to an interrogation room. For two hours, Joe was subject to continuous interrogation by officers of the South Korean military. He told them all the same thing, and he asked repeatedly about Kurt. He got nowhere until Col. Lee and Tim Hale arrived.

They were livid.

“You two must be insane,” Hale said, “following them into North Korea.”

“We were following the lead,” Joe said. “What did you want us to do? Just let them go?”

“Maybe you should have,” Hale said.

“You know this will calm down,” Joe said. “It’s a minor incursion. And let’s not forget who built the damned tunnel.”

“I wasn’t talking about the political situation,” Hale said, “I was referring to Kurt.”

“Why? What’s happened?” Joe said, concerned.

“He’s in a coma,” Hale explained. “The doctors can’t say when — or if — he’s going to come out of it.”