Nucflash

8

Roselli leaned back as the lead SAS breaker aimed his shotgun against the front door’s upper hinges and squeezed the trigger. The gun went off with a hollow boom… a boom repeated an instant later as he slammed a second one-ounce slug into the door’s second hinge. The door breaker rolled back out of the way, chambering another round into his pump-action Mossburg, as the three SAS troopers waiting to either side plunged ahead, the first man up smashing the door aside and tossing in a stun grenade. Even outside on the street, the chain-reaction explosion was deafening; before the final echo had faded, the first man in the stick had lunged into the door, cutting loose with a burst of full-auto fire from his H&K subgun but never pausing for an instant as he cleared the opening, closely followed by his mates in a meticulously choreographed pas de trois that gave all three men clear fields of fire in mutually supported directions.

“Go!” Roselli snapped, and Higgins, unrecognizable in his hooded combat dress, mask, and goggles, swung his sledgehammer in a wide sweep that shattered one of the street-level windows. Sterling tossed a cardboard-bodied flashbang through the opening, and the three men pressed back against the bricks of the apartment as the explosions thundered inside.

Then Roselli was through the window, blinking into the smoky near-darkness of a small parlor just off the apartment’s entrance hallway. His mask was hot and close and narrowed his field of view almost as sharply as night vision gear would have, and he wished he could pull it off; but he concentrated on sweeping every corner of the room. Enough light spilled in through the windows at his back for him to see, but he pulled a flashlight off his vest and held it ready, just in case.

There was one man already in the room, a scruffy-looking tango in jeans and combat vest, writhing about on the floor next to the door leading to the hallway, hands pressed to his ears and blood streaming from his nose. Roselli took three quick steps across the parlor floor, keeping the man beneath the muzzle of his H&K as he kicked the FN FAL assault rifle lying next to the man across the room. He kept the man covered as Sterling slipped in close, knelt by the tango, and frisked him for weapons. Normally, in a quick-moving assault, Roselli would have shot the man dead and moved on, but this operation wasn’t hampered by the need to protect hostages… and the intelligence provided by live prisoners would be as useful as any documents they could hope to find.

“He’s clean,” Sterling said, reaching into a vest side pocket and extracting a clear plastic tie with one hand, as he used the other to grab the tango’s right wrist and slam it into the small of his back.

“Eagle Four-one,” Roselli said into his lip mike as Sterling efficiently cuffed the stunned terrorist. “South parlor on the ground floor secure. One prisoner.”

Over his radio, he heard a second report close on the heels of his. “Eagle Two-two. Entrance achieved, second-floor bedroom. One terr dead, one prisoner.”

“Eagle Three-one,” Sergeant Major Dunn’s voice added. “Entry at the front door. Front passage secure. Two down here.”

“Two-two, Three-one,” Roselli warned. “Coming in from the parlor.”

“Come ahead.”

Roselli moved through the parlor door and into the front hallway. The SAS men were already inside, deploying in different directions, each with a flashlight held next to his weapon, the beams probing through the haze and semidarkness. One terrorist lay sprawled head-down on his back halfway up the stairs, while another was draped over the banister on the landing above. Both had been shot through the head. The entry teams, armed with submachine guns, weren’t packing the explosive 7.62mm bullets used by the snipers’ PM rifles to defeat the terrorists’ body armor.

Burst-fire head shots at close range guaranteed an instant kill.

Gunfire sounded upstairs, harsh, sharp, and insistent. Seconds later, a tango in black jeans and a bulky sweater appeared running along the landing, running blindly, looking back over his shoulder, an M-16 in his hands as he fled some unseen threat at his back. Roselli brought his H&K up to his shoulder and triggered a three-round burst in the same instant that Dunn and another SAS man did the same; the terrorist was caught in a three-way crossfire of bullets that twisted him around, sending him slamming hard against the landing’s banister. Wood splintered and the man catapulted into empty air in a shower of fragments, crashing heavily on the polished wood floor beside the stairway.

Two more SAS men, ominous in solid black, anonymous in their goggles and gas masks, appeared at the top of the landing. “Second floor, clear,” said a voice over Roselli’s headset. “Another down.”

“Back of the flat,” Dunn ordered, gesturing. “Down the passage. Watch for ambush.”

Roselli moved deeper into the flat.

“I’m going downstairs,” Chun said, shouting to make herself heard above the clatter of the helicopters hovering low above the building’s roof. She hefted her weapon, an Uzi. From the cacophony of explosions and muffled bursts of gunfire, mingled with the shouts and screams of the defenders, it sounded as though the attackers were storming up from the ground floor. She started toward the door.

Katarina Holst screamed a warning, and Chun whirled, seeking a target. Black shapes, like immense spiders, had slid down next to the exterior of each window. Karl Steiner raised his assault rifle, and gunfire stabbed in the dim light of the room, thunderously full-auto, as he wildly sprayed the windows in a shower of splintering wood and flying chips of plaster, but then return fire was slashing in through all four windows, pinning Steiner in a twisting, writhing dance before he pitched backward, finger still clenched on the trigger as his weapon chewed a ragged line of holes across the ceiling.

Something like a cardboard tube flew through an open window, bounced once on the floor…

By reflexes honed through long training, Chun squeezed her eyes shut, threw up her arms, and dropped to the floor. The explosion of the flashbang was like nothing she’d ever experienced before in her life, a chain of ear-shattering concussions accompanied by a pulsing, strobing flash so bright it burned bright red through her tightly closed eyelids. After the first cracking explosion, she wasn’t even certain that she was hearing anything anymore, but she could feel the continuing detonations hammering at her body, slapping and clawing at her clothing like a high-pressure blast from a fire hose.

When the concussions ceased, she opened her eyes. Dimly, through a smoky red haze, she could see tall and bulky men swinging through the windows, landing on the floor, unfastening their rappelling ropes from the harnesses they wore over their torsos. The ice-cold sweep of those emotionless goggles was like the gaze of some huge and alien insect. The H&K MP5s strapped to their bodies swept the room, seeking targets, seeking prey. One of the commandos began unfolding a large, heavy blanket as soon as he was free of his line. With practiced speed, he advanced on the drum of burning records and threw the blanket over the top, smothering the flames. In seconds, the smoke in the room grew thicker, harsh white and choking, spilling from beneath the blanket.

Chin stirred, battling the paralysis that seemed to be pressing her down into the floor. They were trying to save the records still burning in the fifty-five-gallon drum! Someone was groaning on the floor close by, and Chun thought it must be Steiner.

She fumbled for her Uzi. Damn… where was it? She couldn’t find it, she’d dropped it, and the men in black were bearing down on her like nightmares made flesh and blood. There was a short, harsh, three-round burst of gunfire into one of her compatriots — she couldn’t tell who. Another burst… and Steiner’s groans were silenced. Katarina Holst struggled to rise, an H&K in one hand, and one of the invaders triggered a burst that tore into her throat and face like a scythe. Without a word or even a sound, the German woman sagged back against a plaster wall stained by her blood, her subgun slipping from limp fingers.

“This ’un’s dead,” one of the figures said, his voice muffled by his mask.

“Here too.”

“Live one here,” another trooper said, bending over Chun. Carefully, he kicked her Uzi well away from her outstretched hand. “I don’t think so, lady,” he said. “Not today, anyway.”

She felt his gloved hands moving to her face, her throat, checking for signs of life. She tried to back away and found she had no strength at all. He seemed to be studying her face closely.

With almost contemptuous ease, the man flipped her over onto her stomach, grabbed her right hand, and pulled it into the small of her back. She felt something thin and plastic snick tight over her wrist… and then the process was repeated for her left hand. Cuffed now, she was helpless. No… no, no! It wasn’t supposed to end this way! Not with her a prisoner of the capitalist bastards! Briefly she considered trying to get to her feet and running; maybe they would shoot her, letting her escape the ignominy of capture.

But someone was securing her ankles as well, taking no chances with a potentially valuable prisoner. One of the men stood over her with his ugly black H&K, speaking into the microphone that must be hidden in that hideous mask. “Eagle One-one. Main room, fourth floor secure. Four terrorists dead, one captured. It’s the Korean bitch.”

She couldn’t hear the response, and at this point she didn’t really care. One of her captors knelt beside her, and after frisking her thoroughly and professionally for weapons, turned her head to the side, and roughly probed the inside of her mouth… searching, she supposed, for the inevitable hollow, poison-filled tooth of spy fiction. It would have been funny if the situation had not been so desperate. She tried to bite his finger, but he was wearing heavy gloves. In the center of the room, two men were removing the blanket from the fire, checking to make sure that the flames had been smothered, while another carefully gathered up the records on the desk that had not yet made it to the burn barrel.

Gunfire sounded elsewhere in the building, and then there was silence. Chun forced herself to relax, closing her eyes to shut out the sight of the enemy soldiers guarding their prizes.

This battle, the enemy had won… but the war was not over yet.

She thought about Pak Chong Yong.

Murdock stood beside Colonel Wentworth and a number of British army officers and security personnel. He was still wearing his civilian clothing and felt out of place among all the uniforms. The only other people in the immediate area in civvies were obviously government types, “suits” in the parlance of those like Murdock who claimed to work for a living.

Wentworth was holding a radio headset to his ear. He looked up at Murdock and cracked a grin. “Right, that’s it,” he said. “Building secure.”

“Excellent,” Murdock said. “Any casualties?”

“One of my boys was winged going into that upstairs front room. Nothing serious.”

“Impressive. How long?”

The SAS colonel consulted his watch. “I make it three minutes, forty seconds, give or take a few… ah, that’s counting from the time I gave the order to the snipers to take down the people on the roof.”

Speed was always the primary consideration in operations like this. If the entry team was fast, the bad guys didn’t have time to kill their hostages, if they were holding any. Nor did they have time to coordinate their defense with one another, or to prepare a stubborn defense against an attack that could come from any or all directions at once.

Across the street, the British Army helicopters, which had been holding their positions above the roofs of the line of Middlebrough brownstones throughout the assault, were beginning to move off. Murdock could see black-clad soldiers filing across the roof and toward one of the machines, which dipped and swayed each time another heavily laden man clambered aboard.

Other SAS men were leaving by a more traditional route, exiting the flat’s front door and walking across the street. Policemen and government agents were crowding in past them as they left, hurrying to begin their investigations, and to get the prisoners who were still under guard inside.

As they reached the police line and ducked beneath the barricades erected along the street, three of the SAS troopers veered away from the rest and approached Murdock. Roselli, Higgins, and Sterling; Murdock recognized them even before they’d revealed their faces.

“Well, gentlemen,” Murdock said as they began divesting themselves of face masks and goggles and handing their unexpended ordnance over to a pair of SAS arms experts. “Having fun?”

“Hey, L-T!” Roselli said, his eyes lighting up. “Too bad you missed all the fun!”

“When’d you get in, Skipper?” Sterling asked.

“Just a few minutes ago,” Murdock told them. “We heloed in from Lakenheath. Came in over the harbor just in time to see all the fireworks, and for a minute I thought one of you clowns had touched off some stores. I didn’t find out it was a ruse until I was on the ground.”

“Worked pretty neat, huh?” Higgins said, grinning. His face was streaked with soot… or possibly it was blacking off the rubber mask and goggles he’d been wearing. “Just like clockwork.”

“Where’s Magic?”

“Up that way, someplace,” Sterling said. “He was with the sniper team. Probably be along shortly.”

“So what was the take?”

“Eight prisoners, last I heard,” Roselli told him. “Couple of them are wounded, though, and might not make it. One of them is what’s-her-name. Kim. Or Chun.”

“Chun Hyon Hee,” Murdock said, nodding. “What about the guy?”

“Pak? No sign of him. Of course, the Brits are still going through the building. You should see some of the high-tech gimmicks they’re using, looking for secret hidey-holes and such.”

“Yeah, but they made us memorize the faces of a bunch of terrs before we went in,” Sterling said. “They’ve got bodies laid out in there like keys on piano, and they’re checking all of’em real, real close. I didn’t see any other Orientals in the lot. Just the Chun woman.”

“That’s not so good,” Murdock said. “The people in Germany are pretty sure he’s here on some kind of an op. A big one.”

“Shit, L-T. No idea what?”

“Not a clue. Maybe Ms. Chun can help us on that.”

Roselli laughed. “That’s one mean-looking woman, Skipper. I don’t think she’s going to tell us a damned thing.”

“Maybe. We’ll let the MI5 boys worry about that. Now… maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell you three were doing getting yourselves involved in a firefight. I don’t recall that being on the list of our assignments over here.”

“Aw, L-T,” Roselli said. He nodded toward Wentworth, who was deep in conversation with a couple of suits nearby. “We’ve been over all that with the colonel there. We were just observing SAS tactics and deployments in the field.”

“Observing, huh? How many tangos did you observe to death in there, Razor?”

“Only one, Skipper.” He raised his thumb and forefinger, holding them half an inch apart. “And he was just a little one.”

“Maybe I should’ve told you guys that tangos were out of season over here, at least for SEALs.”

“Shit, L-T,” Higgins said with a grin. “You know as well as we do that tangos are vermin. Open season, anywhere, anytime, no limit.”

Murdock thought about his own take in Germany and decided not to press the point.

“Besides,” Sterling said. “This was part of our good neighbor policy. Hands across the sea, and all that.”

“And when hands don’t do the job,” Roselli added, slapping the H&K MP5 still strapped against his combat vest, “a few rounds of nine mike-mike work wonders… ”

It was very nearly dark when Pak pulled up to the airfield’s gate and gave the password to the young PRF sentry in camouflage fatigues and lugging a British Army-issue rifle who challenged him. The sentry, one of the Provos, couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old, and he certainly didn’t look alert enough, or trained enough, to provide much of an obstacle should the SAS decide to hit this place as well. Pak said nothing, however, and merely nodded as the kid gave him a passable imitation of a military salute.

That was another thing, Pak reflected as he drove through the open gate. This make-believe that had infused the PRF fighters, this notion that they were a real army with uniforms and salutes and roll calls, might be good for morale, but it also tended to breed overconfidence. Pak had gone along with the idea hoping that the military forms and protocols might bring with them some military discipline. While the PRF army, so called, was somewhat better organized than a peasant mob, it still lacked the steel and the precision of a decent fighting force.

No matter. Children such as the play-soldier at the gate were expendable.

As expendable as the people he’d left behind in Middlebrough.

He felt as bleak as the moor country he’d been driving through for the past several hours. He’d left Hyon Hee, knowing that she would have to face an assault by the enemy’s military, knowing that she would sacrifice herself for the cause. Love was not an emotion discussed or encouraged among members of the North Korean Special Forces. The first several times he and Hyon Hee had enjoyed sex together had been almost comical, with a couple of army officers present in the room to make certain that the properly detached and clinical nature of the exercise was maintained.

The times after that had been better… enough better that Pak knew he’d grown genuinely fond of her.

He wished he could have convinced her to come along with him.

Pak Chong Yong had been on the run all day, uncertain whether or not he’d been seen or followed. Slipping out of the back of the Waterfront Rise apartment minutes after gunfire had erupted at the front, he’d made his way to the ancient but well-serviced speedboat moored at a jetty just outside the BGA Consortium’s port facility fence. From there, it was a two-hour run at a gentle and unsuspicious cruising pace to the landing at Redcar, where a car had been left for just such emergencies as this one. Four hours more, following a twisting and circuitous route in case he was being followed, had brought him to Cranston Moor, where the PRF maintained its field combat training center.

Once, Cranston Moor had been a military base, an airfield for the other RAF, the one that had won the Battle of Britain against the Nazi blitz. During the ’50s it had been converted to a helicopter base for NATO antisubmarine missions over the North Sea, and eventually had been sold to a developer, who’d wanted to open a private flying club.

Several owners later, Cranston Moor had been abandoned, a decaying symbol of the economic recession that continued to dog England. Pak didn’t know who the current owner was, or why he’d made the facilities available to the People’s Revolution, and he didn’t really care. The ex-air base with its single runway and its shabby, crumbling hangars and storage buildings was perfect for the PRF’s needs. The nearest village was Robin Hood’s Bay, ten miles off, and the nearest neighbors on this wild and lonely stretch of North Country moor were perhaps half that distance away. That meant no one would complain about the frequent target practice that went on in one of the empty hangars, as recruits learned how to handle automatic weapons. There was even a grenade and explosives range on the moor out back.

The place was quiet today; Heinrich Adler had ordered all activities that might attract unwanted attention from the authorities suspended once the operation was under way. Even the troops, normally training outdoors on the obstacle course or standing to parade formation on the runway tarmac outside the control tower, had been dispersed.

Pak had agreed that the order was an excellent idea.

Pulling up to a parking area alongside one of the hangars, Pak stopped the car and got out. The base looked, felt deserted, despite the muffled roar of some machinery in use somewhere close by. The empty feel to the place was as it should be, of course. Only a few PRF troops stayed here all the time, maintaining security and keeping casual visitors, hikers and such, away. Adler had a healthy fear of American spy satellites, and while the paramilitary activities at Cranston Moor were officially explained as maneuvers and outings by one of Britain’s numerous survivalist clubs, the PRF’s leadership didn’t want to attract undue attention to what, after all, was supposed to be an abandoned airfield.

“Pak!” a voice said behind him as he walked past the hangar’s maintenance shack door. “You made it! Thank God.”

“I made it,” Pak replied, while thinking that God had nothing to do with it. A thoroughgoing and completely pragmatic atheist, as would be expected of someone raised since the age of six in one of Pyongyang’s strictest military school-academies, he was frequently amused by Westerners’ pretended reliance on divine intervention.

Heinrich Frank Adler walked out of the maintenance shack door, glancing back and forth as if to verify that Pak was alone. He was a tall, rugged, Nordic man with sandy hair and an engaging smile. Once he’d been a bronze medal winner on the East German Army’s Olympic biathlon team, and it was rumored that he’d also been a high-ranking member of that country’s notorious Stasi, the secret police. In 1989, he’d been forced to go underground — even further underground, that is, than he’d been already — to escape the purges that had followed the collapse of the East German government.

Adler had begun assembling the organization now known as the People’s Revolutionary Front even before the formal unification of the two Germanies. He still styled himself “Colonel,” after the rank he claimed he’d held in the army. Pak knew from intelligence sources in Pyongyang that Adler had never actually been more than an unterfeldwebel, a sergeant.

“Come on inside.”

The door opened into a small area filled with ancient tools, engine parts, and rubbish. Beyond was the aircraft hangar proper, an enormous, open space that currently housed only a single craft, an aging Westland Lynx Model 81 helicopter. Acquired through the services of the same faceless man or men who owned Cranston Moor, the helo was government surplus and showed the signs of some years of rugged service with the Royal Navy.

Three men were at work on the machine now, wearing masks and goggles as they applied spray painters to the aircraft’s body, methodically changing the color scheme from the blue-gray of the Royal Navy to a deep, glossy blue-black.

As always, Pak felt a rippling thrill when he saw the helicopter, the centerpiece to this entire operation.

Very soon now, he thought, and my Hyon Hee will be avenged.