The Midas Legacy

45

Colonel Kang watched with angry impatience as the transporter backed towards the Antonov. The enormous Russian cargo aircraft had opened the clamshell rear doors beneath its tail and lowered a ramp to the runway, but the TEL was not preparing to drive inside. Instead, it was positioning itself beneath the rails running the length of the cavernous hold’s ceiling so the missile could be winched up and transferred to a waiting cradle. So huge was the An-124 that it could easily accommodate all three rockets with plenty of room to spare for the ancillary equipment that was also going to their Saudi buyers… but this one would be making the trip alone. A second explosion from the mountain had told the Korean that another missile had been destroyed.

The Arabs wouldn’t be happy about that, but as Mikkelsson had pointed out, the Hwasong-15s themselves were the least valuable and most easily replaced part of the weapon system. The most valuable parts were being loaded aboard right now, Captain Sek and his men taking the trio of warheads and their plutonium cores to the front of the hold. The soldiers would travel with them to Saudi Arabia to ensure that the nuclear materials arrived as agreed — and also to guard them with their lives in case the Russian aircrew had been co-opted by the CIA, or simply decided to hold the bombs ransom. Trust of outsiders was a rare thing in North Korea.

Kang had decided to take the flight himself. Part of his reasoning was to oversee the transfer personally and make sure nothing else went wrong. A second part was his desire to stay away from his superiors in Pyongyang for as long as possible; the obliteration of Facility 17 by foreign spies was a failure that could lead to an instant execution — or, if he had displeased the Supreme Commander sufficiently, a prolonged and agonising one. At the very least, successfully transferring the surviving missile and all three warheads to the Saudis, and returning with their payment, might keep him alive.

The third part of the cargo was being loaded by a forklift. Two wooden crates contained some of Mikkelsson’s gold bars. ‘Now, you will keep them safe, won’t you?’ asked the Icelander from beside him.

‘Of course,’ Kang replied. ‘As safe as if they were my own.’

Mikkelsson gave him a small smile. ‘I am glad we were able to reach an agreement.’ He was holding the small Crucible. A close examination of the dense crystal had reassured him that there was nothing that could be used to track its location, while the undoubtedly bugged carrying case had been discarded. ‘If you wish, I will arrange for an associate of mine to meet you in Saudi Arabia. He can take care of any financial transactions you may wish to make. For a modest percentage.’

The colonel nodded. ‘That would be very helpful, yes. And… a Swiss bank account?’

‘He can assist you with that too.’

‘Good. Good.’ Kang glanced across at the small jet that the ashen-faced Sarah was boarding. A pair of soldiers strained to lift a box holding more gold bars aboard. ‘Your wife,’ he said, more out of a sense of obligation to his benefactor than any particular interest in her well-being. ‘Will she be all right? The news about your daughter…’

‘Sarah will be fine,’ Mikkelsson replied. ‘In time. As will I.’ His jaw muscles tightened with restrained emotion.

‘My condolences,’ said the Korean dispassionately. He turned back to the Antonov. Several chains had been attached to the missile, the aircraft’s internal hoist lifting it from the TEL. He was about to order the Russians to speed up the process when his driver called to him from the nearby SUV. ‘What is it?’

‘Colonel, an urgent message from the airfield’s perimeter guards,’ the man replied.

‘I will let you take care of it,’ said Mikkelsson. ‘I assume we have clearance to leave?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Kang told him with a dismissive wave.

‘Then I shall bid you goodbye. Thank you, Colonel. It has been a pleasure doing business with you.’ The tall blond man headed to the jet.

Kang took the radio handset. ‘What is it?’

‘Sir,’ said the soldier at the other end of the line, ‘a missile transporter is coming down the mountain road.’

‘What?’ Surely it had been destroyed?

‘It’s about a kilometre away. What do you want us to do?’

‘Does it still have a missile aboard?’

A pause, then: ‘No, sir. It’s coming very quickly, though.’

An unpleasant realisation struck Kang, echoing his own desire to avoid facing his superiors. If his men were still in control of the transporter, the last thing they would do after allowing their cargo to be destroyed was rush to tell him. ‘Under no circumstances are you to let that vehicle through the perimeter!’ he snapped. ‘Use all means necessary to stop it. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly, sir,’ came the reply.

Kang tossed the handset back into the SUV and hurried to the Antonov. ‘Get this thing aboard, now! Move faster!’

The loadmaster overseeing the operation was Russian. He might not have understood Korean, but the officer’s urgency was clear. ‘What is rush?’ he asked in halting English.

‘We are under attack!’ Kang growled in kind. ‘We must leave, fast. Tell the pilot to start the engines. We go when the missile is aboard!’

‘No, no,’ said the loadmaster, shaking his head. ‘Missile has to be secured, yes? Cargo strapped down. All safety checks, pre-flight checks, you know? Take twenty minute, thirty minute.’

The colonel drew his sidearm and pushed the muzzle into the other man’s stomach. ‘We go when the missile is aboard,’ he repeated.

The Russian went pale. ‘Okay…’ he said slowly. ‘Three minute?’

The transporter thundered down the road, sweeping around the last of the hillside’s curves on to the relatively flat ground leading to the airbase. Without the missile’s weight, the TEL was considerably more responsive, though it would never break any speed records.

It was still not fast enough for Eddie’s liking, either. ‘Shit! They’ve got the fucking thing loaded,’ he said. Beyond the perimeter fence he could see the runway, the Antonov at its far end. Even from this distance, it was clear that the missile was no longer on the transporter.

‘Look!’ said Nina. Flashing lights on the runway turned out to belong to the jet that had brought them to North Korea as it accelerated to take-off speed. Seconds later it was airborne, banking hard to turn north. ‘Dammit! There goes our ride.’

‘I wasn’t really expecting they’d give us a lift home,’ said Eddie before returning his focus to the rapidly approaching checkpoint. ‘Oh, bollocks.’

‘What is it?’

‘The unwelcoming committee!’ Armed men were dragging concrete blocks in front of the gate, a dazzling searchlight turning towards the TEL.

Nina raised a hand to block the glare. ‘I don’t suppose this windshield is bulletproof?’

‘Nope, found that out the hard way.’

‘So what do we do?’

Eddie dropped down through the gears. ‘This thing’s got sixteen wheels — so it’s a four-by-four-by-four!’

He swung the transporter hard to the right, cutting diagonally across a patch of rough open ground towards the fence. Realising their target was going to avoid the roadblock, the soldiers opened fire. Nina and Eddie ducked as bullets clanged against the truck’s side. The rear door’s window shattered behind the Englishman. He winced, but held his foot on the accelerator. More rounds struck home, but now the fence loomed in the headlights. ‘Hold on!’

The transporter crashed through the barrier, mowing down support poles and shredding the chain-link. Coils of razor wire lashed like whips at the cab, the windscreen cracking — then they were clear. Eddie turned the vehicle towards the runway’s end. Bullets were still plunking off its flank, but the checkpoint was already falling away behind them.

He sat up, seeing the white-and-blue Antonov in the distance. The other TEL had now moved away from it, ground crew doing the same. ‘The bloody thing’s getting ready for take-off.’

‘How can we stop it?’ Nina asked. ‘Block the runway?’

‘If we stop, we’ll get shot, and they’ll just drive the truck away. We’ve got to take out the whole plane.’

‘How?’ She held up one of the dead crew’s Type 58 rifles. ‘Shoot it with this? It’d be like a mosquito trying to take down an elephant!’

Eddie stared at the freighter, a memory of a similar situation coming to him. ‘Take the wheel,’ he said, opening his door.

‘What are you doing?’

He waved for her to move into his place. ‘Something really stupid.’

‘Oh, so business as usual, then?’

He grinned, then clambered out on to the top step to make his way around the front of the cab.

Kang looked on as the missile was lowered, with agonising slowness, into its waiting cradle. Two other spaces sat empty alongside it. The various cases containing the three warheads and their plutonium spheres had been secured at the front of the hold along with numerous crates of equipment and spare parts — and the gold. The two wooden boxes formed a miniature barricade beside the missile’s nose. He gave them a greedy look before turning to the loadmaster. ‘How long? Hurry!’

‘Soon, soon,’ the nervous Russian assured him. He called out to another crew member at the winch controls, who responded with a helpless shrug. ‘Very soon.’

A soldier hurried into the hold. ‘Sir! The transporter just smashed through the fence. It’s coming straight at us.’

The colonel ran to a side hatch and looked out. Headlights were visible in the distance. ‘Shit!’ he growled, hurrying back to the loadmaster. The missile was now in its cradle, the chains going slack. ‘We take off now!’

‘No, no!’ protested the Russian. ‘Not safe! Have to fix straps, chain down—’

‘Do it on the move.’ Kang shouted an order. The other soldiers in the hold instantly responded by snapping their rifles to firing position, all aiming at the loadmaster. ‘Tell the pilots to take off now, or I kill you.’ He switched to Korean to issue another command to Sek. ‘Take three men and get up to the cockpit. I want this plane moving in the next sixty seconds.’

The captain saluted, then he and three of his team raced for the ladder to the Antonov’s upper deck at the rear of the hold. Kang faced the loadmaster again. ‘Well? Do it!’

The Russian licked his dry lips, then shakily drew a walkie-talkie from his belt.

Eddie reached the winch. He let out a few feet of steel cable and supported the hook on one shoulder, then looped the line around its shank. Once it was secure, he started up the winch again, unspooling more cable and collecting it into long coils.

‘What are you doing?’ Nina shouted over the engine’s roar.

‘We’ve got to make sure the warheads never get out of here!’ he yelled back.

‘How?’ One terrifying solution came to her. ‘You… you want to crash into the plane?’

‘We could, but that’d be a bit bad for us too! And we might not even do enough damage; it’s a big-arse plane. But if it gets into the air and then comes straight back down again, really hard…’ He stopped the winch, estimating that he had enough slack in the cable to work with, then glanced over his shoulder. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’

Nina saw the cause of his alarm. ‘It’s setting off!’ The Antonov had left its parking position, heading for the taxiway. It was apparently leaving in a hurry, the aft clamshell doors open and the rear ramp still being raised.

Eddie quickly clambered back to the driver’s side of the cab, hanging the heavy steel loops from one of the roof’s spotlights and signalling for Nina to move over. She slid sideways, her husband climbing in to take her place. ‘Whatever you’re planning, it might be a good time to rethink it,’ she said nervously.

‘Same plan, just a bit more dangerous. And by a bit, I mean loads. If I can lasso the landing gear before it takes off, it’ll drag the transporter with it. It might be a big plane, but this truck’s pretty chunky too; having it hanging off the wheels’ll seriously fuck up its aerodynamics and hopefully make it crash. I was going to put the cable across the runway and try to catch it as it went past, but now we’ll have to chase it.’

‘Which means,’ Nina said unhappily, ‘we’ll both have to be in the transporter when the plane takes off.’

He gave her a look of grim resignation, putting one of his hands on hers. ‘Yeah. I know.’

She stared sadly ahead, seeing not the aircraft but an indelible image from her own mind. ‘Goodbye, Macy,’ she whispered, a tear trickling down her cheek.

There was nothing he could say in response to that. Instead he angled the TEL to intercept the aircraft, the transporter jolting over the rough expanse of grass. ‘Okay, you take over again,’ he said. ‘I’ll climb out and get ready to chuck the cable. Come alongside the plane, and get as close as you can to the wheels.’

They hurriedly made another seat swap, Eddie clambering back on to the step and closing the door behind him. The plane grew ever larger. ‘Damn, that thing is big,’ Nina said.

Eddie couldn’t disagree. The An-124’s high-mounted wings and broad belly gave it a hulking, overbearing appearance, a towering bully straight from the Cold War. Adding to the impression was its undercarriage; rather than separate sets of landing gear spread out beneath the fuselage, as on an airliner, the Antonov went for brute strength, five massive double-tyred legs in a row on each side of its hull. It even had two sets of nose wheels rather than just one.

All the better, as far as he was concerned. The more wheels, the more chance he had of snagging one. ‘Okay!’ he shouted as the transporter bounded over a drainage ditch on to the taxiway. ‘Catch up with it!’

Nina swung the TEL around — discovering that its twelve-wheel steering system turned it more sharply than she’d expected. Eddie yelped as centrifugal force threw him outwards, the looped cable shimmying around the spotlight. ‘Careful!’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she snapped. ‘I should have been learning how to drive a truck rather than raising a child!’

He smiled. ‘Love you too.’ Steadying himself, he collected the coils of cable and looked up at the Antonov. ‘Wow, the last time I chased a massive jet along a runway, I was in a Ferrari…’

The TEL came in behind the An-124’s starboard wing. Even with the giant freighter only at taxi speed, the jet blast from the two huge engines was fearsome. Searing air, reeking of fuel, scoured Eddie’s exposed skin. He waved for Nina to position the truck in line with the fuselage. She did so, the Antonov’s stern sliding into view ahead. The rear ramp was almost fully raised, folding to act as a bulkhead at the back of the hold. The two huge clamshell doors forming the tailcone’s underside started to close. The aircraft was almost ready for take-off.

The wing loomed above as Nina brought the transporter closer to the row of wheels. Eddie briefly considered using a rifle to strafe and puncture the fuel tanks, but dismissed the idea. Jet fuel was hard to ignite; even a red-hot bullet was unlikely to start a fire, never mind cause an explosion, and the pilots would know within seconds that they had a fuel leak and stop the plane.

If that happened, the warheads would leave North Korea by some other means — and by then he and Nina would be dead. Downing the Antonov was the only way to make their sacrifice count. ‘Okay,’ he said as he held on to the spotlight and hefted his metallic lasso, ‘let’s rope us some Russian dogies…’

Kang stood in the cockpit with Sek and one of his men, watching over the pilots’ shoulders as the runway’s lights drew closer. Faced with the threat of having their aircraft impounded and themselves ending up in a North Korean prison — or simply being shot — the Russian aircrew had unwillingly set the Antonov in motion before finishing their pre-flight checks, hurriedly running through as many of the items on their list as possible as the plane trundled towards take-off position.

The colonel’s radio crackled. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Have you killed the spies?’

‘Uh… no, sir,’ said the worried soldier down the channel. ‘We haven’t caught up with the missile transporter yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s chasing you!’

Kang and Sek looked at each other in alarm. ‘Which side?’

‘The right, sir.’

Ignoring the co-pilot’s protests, Kang shoved him aside to lean over and peer back through a side window. ‘I can’t see them,’ he said, straightening.

‘They might try to crash into us,’ said Sek, worried.

Kang addressed the pilot, a man named Petrov, in English. ‘We are being chased by a truck! It might ram the plane, or block the runway. We have to go faster and take off.’

The Russian spoke better English than his comrades, the language being a requirement for international pilots. ‘No, if they could damage the plane, we have to stop! It is too dangerous to—’

‘Take off!’ roared Kang, drawing his gun for emphasis. The other cockpit crew behind him reacted with shock. ‘Go faster! Now!’

Petrov tried to cover his fear and maintain a professional calm, but the weapon pointed at his head — and the rage-crazed expression of the man holding it — made it clear who was now in command of the aircraft. He pushed the throttle levers forward. The engine note rose, the Antonov gaining speed. Kang gave him a contemptuous glare, then withdrew. ‘This is what we get for taking a contract from fucking North Korea,’ the pilot muttered in his own language to the co-pilot, who swallowed and nodded in agreement.

The TEL’s cab drew level with the middle set of undercarriage wheels. Eddie had hoped to reach the front to increase his chances of catching one with his lasso but the rising shriek of the engines meant that he had run out of time. ‘They’re speeding up! Go faster!’ he shouted to Nina.

She pushed down the accelerator, but the third set of the Antonov’s wheels slipped past, then the fourth. ‘It’s too slow!’ she cried.

‘Shit!’ The final landing leg rumbled past Eddie. Last chance. He pulled the steel loop wide and tossed it at the huge tyre—

One side fell behind the fat wheel, snagging against the hub as the other was caught by the whirling tread and snatched underneath. The hook slammed into the hydraulics with a bang as the loop snapped tight around the axle.

‘Let out the winch!’ Eddie yelled, twisting to point at a dash-mounted control box in front of one of the passenger seats; the winch could be operated from both inside the cab and out. ‘If there’s enough slack, we can slow down and jump off before the plane drags us!’

Nina looked at the box. There were two levers and several switches on it, but all the text was in Korean. She leaned across the cab, straining to reach it. The larger of the two levers was marked with arrows pointing up and down, which she guessed controlled the spool. She stretched out her hand and pushed it forward, to the up position. An electric whine came from outside.

‘No, the other one!’ Eddie called urgently. ‘The winch brake, you need to let it run free—’

Tyres screeched — and a wall of metal filled the windscreen.

The Antonov had turned on to the runway, the massive aircraft rocking on its undercarriage as it changed direction too quickly. Nina gasped and spun the wheel to avoid a collision — and save Eddie from being crushed against the fuselage.

The smell of burning rubber joined the stink of jet fuel. Its port wingtip drooping alarmingly close to the ground, the An-124 continued through its ninety-degree turn, finally coming into line with the runway lights and reeling back upright. Nina struggled to regain control of the transporter as it veered behind the inboard engine. Searing jet exhaust pummelled Eddie. ‘Get behind it, behind it!’ he shouted, hunching up to protect his face.

She swung the TEL back to the left. The Antonov had now pulled far enough ahead for the vehicle to get beneath its tail. She straightened out, then made another lunge for the winch control—

The four massive engines roared to full thrust.

A superheated hurricane whirled around the transporter. The colossal aircraft accelerated with alarming speed, racing away down the runway — with the cable lashing behind it.

It snapped taut. Eddie lost his footing and swung from the spotlight as the TEL leapt forward. Nina was thrown back in her seat. She stamped at the brake pedal, but to no avail.

The Antonov thundered towards take-off speed, dragging the transporter behind it.