The Midas Legacy

49

The Antonov picked its way through the crumpled labyrinth of valleys of North Korea’s south-eastern region. The cockpit lights had been all but extinguished to let the pilots adjust their eyesight to the darkness, but despite their tension as they guided the hulking aircraft between the hills and mountains, staying as low as they dared to avoid radar, it was one of the flight crew behind them who was under the most pressure. Using a paper chart, he was trying to plan a route to the border that would both stave off detection for as long as possible — and keep the plane from rounding a peak to find nothing but a wall of rock directly ahead.

With no time to plot a course in advance, he was forced to relay directions to the pilots on the fly. ‘In forty seconds turn, uh… twenty degrees starboard,’ he said, having to approximate the speed-to-distance calculations in his head. ‘Next turn after that will be to port.’

Not taking his eyes off the moonlit landscape beyond the windscreen, Petrov spoke to Eddie, who was in the crew seat immediately behind him — both to make sure the pilots were taking them south, and to keep them covered with his gun. ‘Please, we have to go higher. The mountains are getting bigger. If we take the wrong route, we will not be able to climb fast enough to get over them.’

‘Then don’t take the wrong route,’ Eddie replied sardonically, trying to mask his nervousness. He could make out enough of the rushing terrain to tell that it would only take a moment of lost concentration to end up embedded in it. Warning lights flashed continuously on the control panels; the pilots had already been forced to switch off the aircraft’s verbal alarms because the endless droning of ‘Terrain. Pull up. Terrain. Pull up…’ had driven them to distraction. ‘They’ll already be looking for us. If they get a radar fix, they’ll be on us in no time.’

‘Even this low, they may already have one! They have radar everywhere along the border.’

‘How far to the DMZ?’ Nina asked. She was at the cockpit’s rear with the other gun, the rest of the Antonov’s crew coralled between her and her husband.

‘Dee-em-zed,’ Eddie corrected.

‘Dee-em-zee, and you think now’s a good time for a transatlantic pronunciation debate?’

The man with the map, who was slowly moving his fingertip over it to mark their current position, glanced at a line below his nail. ‘Four, five kilometres.’

‘Can you go any faster?’ Eddie asked Petrov.

The Russian snorted incredulously. ‘You want to die?’ He saw the valley promised by the navigator and turned as quickly as he dared to follow it. With its landing gear jammed down and the battered rear doors still open, the An-124’s aerodynamics — and manoeuvrability — were compromised.

‘We made it this far,’ said Nina. ‘If we keep doing what we’re doing, we might—’

Those crew with headphones simultaneously twitched in alarm. Eddie heard a strident voice in Petrov’s earpiece. ‘Who’s that?’ he demanded.

‘They’ve found us!’ the pilot cried. ‘They’re ordering us to turn back to Tonyong!’

‘It might be a bluff. Keep going.’

‘No, they have our position and course!’

A gasp of alarm from the navigator drew everyone’s attention. He spoke urgently — and fearfully — to the pilots. ‘This valley splits ahead — and they are both dead ends!’ Petrov warned. ‘We have to climb.’

‘But then they’ll be able to shoot at us,’ Nina protested.

‘Yup,’ said Eddie. ‘You might want to hold on really tight…’

The navigator began what sounded to the two Westerners like a countdown as the North Korean kept barking commands over the radio. Petrov kept the Antonov in the valley for as long as he could, then snapped: ‘Climbing now!’

He pulled back the controls. The An-124 laboured upwards, a tree-covered wall of rock briefly looming beyond the windows before falling out of sight. Eddie glanced at the map. They could only be a couple of kilometres from the DMZ—

The radio voice cut out. Petrov blanched. ‘They have gone!’

‘What do you mean, gone?’ said Nina.

‘They have stopped talking! They would only do that if—’

‘If they’ve given up trying to talk us around,’ Eddie finished for him. That meant…

The co-pilot yelled a Russian obscenity, staring in horror out of his window.

In the distance to the west, an orange pillar of fire and smoke rose from the ground. It headed quickly into the black sky… then seemed to slow.

Eddie knew it was an optical illusion. The source of the flames was most likely a telegraph-pole-sized SA-2 surface-to-air missile, like much of North Korea’s arsenal an old Soviet weapon, but its age made it barely less deadly. It was still a threat even to fighter aircraft, so the lumbering freighter would be an easy target.

Petrov issued rapid instructions to his crew. Seat belts were hurriedly tightened, those men without chairs racing aft to find secure places in the passenger compartment. ‘What’s the plan?’ Eddie demanded as Nina hurried to join him.

‘There is no plan!’ Petrov replied, barely controlling his panic. ‘This plane is civilian, it has no defences — all we can do is run and hope we do not get blown up!’ He turned due south and shoved the throttles further forward.

Eddie looked back through the starboard window. The missile was now a small halo of light around a tiny dark dot, drifting lazily across the sky towards them. ‘How far to the DMZ?’ The strip of neutral territory bisecting the Korean peninsula was four kilometres wide, and would take just over a minute to traverse at the Antonov’s current speed — but the SAM was approaching at more than three times the speed of sound. It would easily reach them before they crossed it.

‘We will be there in seconds,’ said the Russian. ‘Now shut up!’

‘All right, keep your hair on! Wish I could…’

The co-pilot shouted a warning to Petrov, who forced the plane into a hard descending turn. The approaching missile took on terrifying dimensionality as it rolled out of sight beyond the window. Eddie clutched Nina to him—

A bright flash from outside — and the Antonov was thrown sideways as if kicked by an angry god, its hull echoing to the clamour of a thousand burning hailstones. The SA-2 had detonated as it streaked past, its warhead almost two hundred kilograms of high explosive surrounded by a jacket of frangible steel that turned instantly into a cloud of supersonic shrapnel. The explosion was followed a split second later by a deafening bang of disintegrating metal as a chunk of the starboard fuselage tore away, taking a huge bite out of the aircraft’s side.

Alarms screamed as the cockpit’s occupants regained their senses. Petrov battled with the controls, dragging the enormous plane out of its roll towards earth. A bank of warning lights lit up in a terrifying grid of red. ‘We’ve lost both starboard engines!’ he cried, still struggling with the yoke as the co-pilot triggered the crippled engines’ fire extinguishers. ‘The rudder is damaged, we can’t turn well!’

Another horrified warning in Russian from the co-pilot. Another two blazing lines were being etched into the sky—

More fiery flashes from the ground — but these came from ahead, lancing from a flattened hilltop a few miles away. ‘Oh my God!’ Nina yelled. ‘They’re everywhere!’

‘We’re over the DMZ!’ said the pilot, pushing the Antonov into another desperate evasive turn. ‘Those are coming from South Korea!’

‘Great, now everyone’s shooting at us!’ Eddie held Nina more tightly, watching as another pair of missiles rushed at them —

And shot past.

All heads whipped around in surprise to track them. A second later, two more brilliant flashes lit the sky, followed by thunderous detonations. ‘They… they shot down the other rockets,’ said the co-pilot, stunned.

‘Must have been Patriots,’ Eddie realised. Both Koreas relied on armaments from their most powerful allies to defend their sides of the border; the difference was that the south had the latest technology from the United States rather than decades-old Soviet weapons. The Antonov had either had the good fortune to cross the DMZ within range of a battery of Patriot interceptors, or — equally likely — South Korea had more of the missiles deployed along the 160-mile dividing line than it let on.

‘Okay, so they just saved us,’ said Nina. ‘Now what?’

The answer came as a new voice crackled through the pilot’s headphones. Eddie hurriedly re-donned his own set to listen. The language was English, and the accent American. ‘Unknown aircraft, unknown aircraft. You have illegally entered South Korean airspace. Identify yourself, or turn back across the DMZ. You will not be allowed to proceed any further unless you identify yourself. If you do not, we will shoot you down.’

Petrov exchanged worried looks with his crew before answering. ‘We are a civilian freight aircraft — I repeat, we have civilians aboard. Do not shoot, do not shoot.’

No reply. Eddie pulled off his headphones and handed them to Nina. ‘You should talk to ’em.’

‘Why me?’ she asked.

‘Because you’re American, and you’re always telling me I can’t do the accent!’

She donned the headset. ‘Hello, can you hear me? This is Dr Nina Wilde, working for the United Nations. We’ve uncovered a plot by North Korea to export nuclear weapons, which is why they’re trying to kill us! Please respond.’

Still no answer. Petrov glanced back at her with an expression that suggested that desperation had just driven ingenuity. ‘Tell them we helped you steal the bombs! We knew nothing about them; the North Koreans told us they were… farm equipment! Yes, farm equipment.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said, before trying again. ‘I repeat, this is Dr Nina Wilde from the United Nations. We have—’

‘I say again, unknown aircraft,’ the American cut in. ‘Identify yourself immediately. We will shoot you down if you do not respond.’

‘Hello, hello? I’m responding! Can you hear me?’ There was no reply. ‘Oh crap!’ said Nina. ‘We can hear them, but they can’t hear us!’

One of the crew made a hurried check of his instrument panel. ‘Transmitter is out!’ he reported. ‘Electric systems, many kaput!’

The pilot made another attempt to get through, with no success. The voice on the radio returned. ‘We have you in sight and are approaching from your eight o’clock. We will attempt visual communication. This is your last chance. If you do not respond, we will kill you.’ The threat was delivered with stony calm.

Petrov turned to look back. ‘I see two jets!’

Eddie forced himself upright. ‘What are you doing?’ Nina asked, seeing his obvious pain.

‘I’ll talk to ’em.’

‘How? The radio’s broken! And also, why you?’

‘I know how to talk to flyboys.’ He addressed the crew. ‘I need a torch, a flashlight — something I can use for Morse code.’

‘The Americans do not use Morse any more,’ Petrov protested.

‘Then let’s hope these guys are old school! Come on, get me a light, quick!’

A pair of F-16 Fighting Falcons, part of the massive US military contingent dedicated to protecting the South Korean border, closed on the lumbering Antonov. One held back, fixing the freighter in its sights, while the second drew alongside to attempt communication with its pilots. Information had been passed on from the ground that the aircraft had been under SAM fire before crossing the DMZ, but that didn’t mean it would get a free pass. North Korea was notoriously sneaky, the lead pilot mused, and faking an attack to get its forces into South Korean airspace under the pretence of a defection was exactly the kind of thing they would do…

A light flashed from the rearmost window of the Antonov’s darkened cockpit. ‘They’re signalling,’ the pilot reported. ‘Looks like Morse code.’ That made sense: the An-124 was a Russian plane. While the USAF had phased out Morse from standard usage decades ago, other countries still used it.

‘Can you tell what they’re saying?’ asked his wingman.

‘Yeah, hold on…’ The code might no longer have been part of air force training, but many pilots still knew it; he had taught himself in childhood after a diet of movies and TV shows where messages were silently flicked between ships and planes, entranced by the idea of sending secret messages to his friends. His memory was rusty, but he pieced this one together word by word. ‘American… on board… do… not… shoot… you… dickhe— Hey!’

‘Did they just insult you?’

‘Yeah!’ He was affronted — but also oddly intrigued. North Korean insults tended to be much more florid. Maybe there really was an American aboard. He let the message continue. ‘Working for usint… huh? Usintel… oh, US intel! Have stolen NK illegal weapons… three…’ He fell silent in shock as he translated the series of flashes into words.

‘What?’ said his wingman. ‘What did they say?’

‘He says they, uh… they have three nuclear warheads aboard, and do we want them?’

Thirty minutes later, Eddie and Nina were on the ground at Osan airbase south of Seoul — though the landing had been as stressful as the rest of the flight.

Shepherded by more US and South Korean fighters, all primed to blast the Antonov out of the sky if it deviated in the slightest from its assigned course, the battle-scarred aircraft made a hard and terrifying touchdown on its damaged landing gear, the strut to which the TEL had been lassoed collapsing and tearing away. With only two engines providing reverse thrust, it almost overshot the end of the runway, the twin nose wheels stopping just yards from the mud beyond the concrete. It was immediately swarmed by military vehicles, dozens of troops training their weapons upon the plane as its occupants were ordered by loudhailer to disembark and surrender.

Nina supported Eddie, helping him limp down the rear ramp as both raised their hands. ‘I was hoping for a reception with, y’know, a lot fewer guns pointed at me,’ she said, blinking into the glaring spotlights. ‘Or preferably none.’

‘Wilde and Chase nuclear delivery service!’ Eddie called out as they reached solid ground. ‘H-bombs direct to your door. Don’t forget to tip!’

The soldiers did not respond well to the joke. ‘Get down on the ground with your hands behind your heads!’ one bellowed through the speaker. ‘Do it now!’

‘He’s hurt!’ Nina protested.

Eddie gritted his teeth as he lowered himself painfully to the runway and lay on his front. ‘They really don’t care, love.’

The Russians followed them out of the An-124, also lying face-down. A squad of soldiers in armoured hazmat gear ran to surround them. One man hurriedly passed a Geiger counter over the supine prisoners. It crackled, but not enough to cause alarm. ‘Where are the bombs?’ the leader shouted, voice muffled behind his face mask.

‘In there,’ said Nina, jerking a thumb towards the hold. ‘There’s a plutonium sphere tied to the floor; you might want to take care of that first. Long story,’ she added, sensing he was about to ask a question that would require a long and convoluted answer. He got the message and quickly led his team inside.

Boots tramped towards her. ‘Which of you is Nina Wilde?’ another man demanded.

Nina risked raising her head far enough to give the questioner, an air force colonel, a scathing look. ‘That would be me, with the breasts.’ Eddie had given the F-16’s pilot more information via Morse while the Antonov was in flight, including the nature of their mission.

‘And Eddie Chase?’

‘Me,’ said Eddie. ‘The one with the bullet in his leg. Which I’d really, really like someone to fix, because it fucking hurts!’

‘Stretcher!’ the colonel called to a medical team waiting beyond the circle of guns, before turning back to the couple. ‘The State Department confirmed your story that you were in North Korea as part of an intelligence-gathering operation. So how the hell did you end up in a Russian cargo plane with a hold full of nuclear weapons?’

‘Like I said,’ Nina told him wearily, ‘it’s a long story. Too long.’

Her husband chuckled as the medics carefully lifted him on to a stretcher. ‘It’ll make a great book, though.’