Operation Hail Storm

Wonsan, North Korea ― Warehouse

Victor Kornev had three good reasons for running.

Number one: Only a handful of people knew his phone number. Whoever had called him was not a prank caller or had accidentally performed a butt dial.

Number two: Less than a handful of people knew where he was at that exact moment.

Number three: Only two people that he knew of, other than the truck driver and the guards, knew what was in the warehouse.

The union of those three facts meant that the caller was on the level. And as far as Victor was concerned, there was no down side to getting the hell out of there. He would put about a mile distance between himself and the warehouse, then turn around and watch and wait. After a few hours, if nothing went boom, then he would drive back, get paid and get the hell out of North Korea.

As Kornev ran out of the office, he first considered just running out the front gate. And then he recalled seeing the keys in that UAZ, or the GOAT as they Russians called it, out front. He was glad that the engine turned over and he didn’t have to go through some starting ritual to get the goat moving. He found what he thought was first gear, let out the clutch and pointed the car toward the main gate.

Kornev wasn’t aware as he drove that he kept periodically looking out his window and up into the sky to see if some sort of aircraft was bearing down on his position. But he was fully aware that he needed to put some distance between himself and the warehouse.

After he had blasted past the guard at the main gate and centered the car on the little dirt road ahead, he was starting to feel good about the situation. Someone somewhere, a friend he didn’t even know he had, was looking out for him. Good friends in his business were hard to find.

Kornev was thinking happy thoughts about his new friend when sparks fell into his lap and the canvas top on the goat cut loose and went sailing back over his head.

At first, Kornev thought an electronic component in the dashboard was shorting out and throwing sparks. Then he looked down and saw that the latch that had secured the fabric top to the goat was lying in his lap. That was weird. The goat was not the best vehicle in the world, but a short circuit under the dashboard shouldn’t cause the ragtop’s handle to fall off.

He looked up into the sky for an inbound aircraft and three bullets ripped three holes into the goat’s dashboard. The attack was so sudden and so unexpected, that Kornev didn’t react at all. One second, there were no holes in the goat’s dashboard, and then a second later, three perfect holes stitched through the top of the dash like they were part of the vehicle’s initial design. Maybe cooling holes of some type.

Victor compensated for his delayed reaction by stepping hard into the accelerator. He now understood that he was being targeted, but he didn’t know by what or who. He craned his neck and looked back over his shoulder at the road behind him. Nothing. Then he looked backwards and up into the night sky. Nothing, or at least nothing he could see.

Then, over the engine noise, Kornev heard something very familiar. It wasn’t a typical sound one heard when being attacked in a vehicle traveling on a North Korean road in the middle of nowhere. He heard the unmistakable sound of a silencer. PLAP-PLAP-PLAP. Three quick rounds. A short burst from an automatic silenced weapon of some type. Kornev recognized the sound because he had sold thousands of silencers of every type for just about every gun he could name. He had test-fired thousands of rounds through silencers to make sure they were indeed silent. Or at least as silent as one could be.

Victor looked behind him in the goat’s rear-view mirror. He saw nothing. He looked up again into the sky and saw nothing. And then a bullet went through his right hand. It felt like he had been stung by an extremely venomous creature. He snatched his hand off the steering wheel and tried to shake out the pain. Instead, he shook out blood that went sailing into his face and onto the goat’s still intact windshield.

That’s when Victor Kornev knew he was going to die. Something was on him and he couldn’t shake it. He couldn’t even see it. It was a new weapon of some sort and his last regret on this earth was he wouldn’t live long enough to sell it to any of his customers.

Victor kept his foot pegged to the accelerator. He fully understood that in the next few seconds his head would catch a volley of lead and he would be dead before he even knew what hit him. But what actually hit him was heat. An enormous fireball erupted just above and behind him. He could feel his neck and the back of his head prick and tingle as the flames tried to catch him. The sound was so loud and the shock wave was so close, that he nearly drove off the road. But luck was with him on that night. The fireball faded and condensed in Victor’s rearview mirror, leaving black smoke that had dissipated into the jungle before Kornev had made his next turn.

What it was, Kornev may never know. But this was not the airstrike that his friendly caller had warned him about. This was something entirely different and unique. This was something that Kornev wanted to get his hands on.