Devil's Fork (26 page)

After a few minutes, Tom’s radio began
speaking,

“
Yankee Actual. Can you
stop your movement? Over.”

“
Roger. Over.” He whispered
back.

Tom ran for a few more steps to find the
best secluded spot in the area. He spotted a small ditch next to a
large rock to his left. Tom liked low spots like that. He moved
towards it. He looked around and saw nothing near him. The previous
patrol had moved to a comfortable distance from him. Tom wondered
what Anderson needed to tell him that required stopping. He lowered
himself into the ditch and rested his M4 on the ground in front of
him.

“
Go Ahead.
Over.”

“
Do you remember one of
the analysts from the NIS who briefed you? Jiyeon?
Over.”

Tom paused.

Why would they ask that?

He thought this could have been one of the
strangest radio transmissions he had ever received.

“
I do.”

“
She has been kidnapped.
We believe she was taken by a North Korean team. They might try to
interrogate her. If they find out what she knows, you could have
multiple kilos on your position quickly. Kilos might rally at
target to defend it as well. Over.”

For the second time
tonight, Tom looked down and closed his eyes. A worse transmission
could not possibly have been made. Tom wondered how this mission
could have gone so wrong, from the North Koreans finding out about
his landing to Jiyeon getting kidnapped. The SAD prided itself on
being able to get in and out of hostile territory flawlessly. He
had been on missions that nobody – neither the enemy nor anyone
back home – had known about. With this mission, he felt as though
they already had two rockets fired at them. Tom felt his hands
forming fists. His heart rate increased. But this was not out of
fear. He thought about Jiyeon. Tom thought about their dinner. He
could still smell the spices from the barbeque. He thought about
how he kept telling a nervous Jiyeon that everything would be OK.
He felt comfortable that it was
he
who was going into danger. It was
he
who could possibly get
captured or killed. How did this get completely turned around to
where Jiyeon was now in extreme danger, he wondered? He put up his
night vision goggles to rest his eyes. He looked up and saw a
sharply pointed, dimly spotted moon above. He wanted to finish his
mission here. He wanted to finish what he had come to do. He wanted
to know what was inside that base. But he had an urge to get up and
fly back to South Korea and find Jiyeon. He wanted to go forward
but he wanted to go back. He wanted to complete this mission, but
he wanted to go on another mission instead. He did not like the
thought that he could do nothing for Jiyeon right now. He thought
about her small, soft hands. He imagined her soft, flowing hair in
between his fingers. He got back on his radio.

“
Yankee Main. Have you
found where she is? Over.”

“
Negative. South Korean
police and armed forces searching for her now. We will keep you
updated. Stay vigilant. If you see a change in kilo behavior
nearby, report it. We will keep you informed. Over.”

“
Wilco. Over.” That was a
difficult “wilco” to say, Tom thought. He decided he would take a
moment for himself in this ditch, before moving on.

“
Yankee Actual. Rest for a
moment and think ab—“
.

Suddenly, a figure emerged from the trees
and bushes about thirty feet directly in front of Tom. Anderson’s
cutoff transmission made it obvious that the Command Room had
noticed and was probably terrified.

Tom slowly picked up his M4 in front of him.
He tried not to make any noise or sudden movement. He flipped down
his night vision goggles and watched.

The figure ahead was walking slowly. It was
clearly a KPA patrol. The soldier’s face was moving left to right
as he scanned the area in front of him. Tom saw that behind the
first soldier were four others. They were walking in a column and
were coming from the direction of the path that led to the base.
They walked cautiously and quietly.

Tom soon estimated that they were twenty
feet in front of him. At about ten feet they would be likely to see
him. He started looking through his scope. The first soldier, the
point man, was looking around but was not the commander and did not
have a radio. The second man also looked like a conscript. The
third man, however, had a radio on his side. Being in the middle
meant he could potentially be the commander as well. His uniform
looked slightly different from the others. Tom wanted to target
this person first. Taking out the man with the radio who could also
potentially be the commander could throw the team into disarray.
Tom would gain relative advantage this way. But he did not plan to
leave time for them to do anything. He looked through his scope and
took aim at the third man. He sat and waited for the possibility
that the team might pass without seeing him.

Soon the team was about fifteen feet away.
The first soldier was now looking at Tom. His stiff neck indicated
he was trying to understand what was in front of him. He raised his
hand to signal his team to stop. The column halted perhaps thirteen
feet away from Tom. The first soldier was now trying to make some
kind of hand signal towards his team.

Click Click Click Click Click.

In less than two seconds the entire patrol
team was on the ground, motionless. The only sound made was the
barrel of Tom’s silenced rifle clicking as it recoiled. They had no
time to react. Tom waited for a moment. He continued looking
through his scope to see if any of the soldiers would move or reach
for a weapon or radio. He listened for any sounds indicating
someone else was nearby. He heard nothing. The team lay still.

“
Yankee Actual. Watch out
for other kilos nearby. Over.”

“
No signs of other
activity. Over.”

Tom climbed out of his ditch. He looked
around one more time and saw nothing but forest. He walked up to
the five men lying in front of him. They were not moving. They were
lying in an open part of the forest. They could probably be seen
from at least a hundred feet away, Tom thought.

“
Yankee Main. I’m going to
move the bodies into the covered ditch and then continue on planned
route. Over.”

“
Roger. Over.”

Tom shouldered his rifle and started pulling
the men into the ditch. He had an urge to get moving again. He
wanted to get this mission done. He wondered if he got back quickly
enough, maybe he could be part of the team that rescued Jiyeon. All
those years in DEVGRU could be put to a personal use finally, he
thought. He tried to refocus himself on what he had to do here.

Soon all five bodies were in the ditch. Tom
took a quick look at the commander’s radio and saw it would be
useless to him. He was tempted to take it so he could listen to
enemy chatter – by sending it back to the Command Room where it
could be translated. But he realized it was a big piece of junk. It
was clunky, heavy, and it did not seem to be on. He did not see any
lights. He threw it into the ditch too.

“
Continuing on my path.
Over.”

Tom started moving on through the ridge. He
moved faster than before.

CHAPTER 38

EARLY THURSDAY

South Korea

Jiyeon awoke in a corner of an empty room.
She saw a curtain drawn over the window on the far wall. On the
opposite corner, a door thoroughly chewed up and scratched was
closed. A battered wooden chair sat against the wall nearby. It was
dark, but through the crack under the door, a dim light seeped
in.

Jiyeon examined herself. Her hands and feet
were bound. She did not bother trying to move or shift around. Her
muscles still felt that malaise one feels during a fever, where
moving seems to make the muscles scream. She wondered if this was
real or a dream. In unbelievable situations it is hard to come to
terms with reality.

How could this have happened?

She tried to listen for voices past the
door. She heard some movement somewhere in the house she was in,
but it was irregular. She could not hear anyone speak. She had no
idea who the people that snatched her were.

Actually, she did.

She thought back to some of
her training courses at the NIS. One section they had spent
significant time on was North Korean abductions. In short, North
Korea created the largest state-sponsored kidnapping effort in the
world. Many people knew the famous case of the South Korean
filmmaker and his wife who were abducted by North Korean agents.
They were brought into North Korea to make films for the regime,
primarily those for propaganda purposes. One film they created was
called
Pulgasari
and was a North Korean version of the Japanese Godzilla.
Jiyeon remembers feeling a tingle in her feet while seeing parts of
it during the training session. The abducted couple tried to escape
unsuccessfully but eventually was able to defect while making a
film abroad. But there were an abundance of other abductees. In the
1960’s, there was a Korean Airlines flight that was hijacked by
North Korean intelligence officers. It landed in the North and the
regime said the crew wanted to defect to
the North.
They were used in
propaganda videos. Jiyeon heard the story while growing up but
remembered being shocked to learn in the NIS training session that
some of the crew was still in North Korea. Many other South Korean
citizens from fishermen to students were kidnapped. What many
people did not realize, however, was that North Korea kidnapped
people from many
other
countries as well. Starting in 1977, North Korean officers
began kidnapping Japanese citizens. They were forced to serve as
Japanese language and culture instructors for North Korean
intelligence officers. Jiyeon was shocked to learn that the true
number of Japanese kidnapped was still unknown, and could be in the
hundreds. During the 2000’s, North Korea allowed some of the
families to return to Japan. But the foreign victims were not just
from Japan. In training, they were told about the NARKN, which
stood for
National Association for Rescue
of Japanese Citizens Kidnapped by North Korea
. NARKN also tracked non-Japanese who were kidnapped by the
North. From the evidence they were able to gather, there were also
four Lebanese, one Thai, one Romanian, two Chinese, four Malays,
one Singaporean, three French, three Italian, two Dutch, and one
Jordanian that were kidnapped. When Jiyeon was reading about some
of the cases during training, she at one point thought she was
reading fiction. The Chinese abductees were young women working in
Macau. The Lebanese citizens were abducted by receiving offers from
an alleged Japanese company to work in North Korea. The French
citizens were women who had met a man they thought was a wealthy
Chinese or Japanese executive. This man began courting them with
gifts. Eventually these women married the man and left for their
honeymoon to Asia. Eventually they flew into Pyongyang where the
wealthy man disappeared and North Korean officers took the women
into custody. When the women asked for their husbands, they were
told to stop inventing stories. As far as anyone knew, those women
were either still in North Korea or were dead. Jiyeon remembered
thinking that this was all beyond absurd. Then she corrected
herself – for any other country in the world, this was absurd but
for North Korea this pattern of behavior fit right into their
activities. The abductions had slowed since their peak in the
1970’s, but they did not stop. Jiyeon realized she was now on that
list. She was now in the hands of a North Korean kidnapping
team.

She looked up as she heard footsteps outside
her door. A steady beat hit the floor beyond the threshold. She
felt it in her spine. The footsteps passed by and her door stayed
closed. She felt a sharpness crawl through her stomach and into her
chest. She was not in control. There was nothing she could do to
get out. She could not run away. She could not even stand up. When
a feeling of powerlessness sets in, the mind sinks into terror.

How did they know I work for the NIS? Who
set this up?

Her first thought flew to Li, the Chinese
attaché at the embassy she saw at the bar with Tom. He could not be
a normal diplomatic officer. Jiyeon knew that China and North Korea
were allies. Maybe he had set this up, she thought. He was acting
quiet and strange at the bar. He did not want to talk. She
remembered how unfriendly he looked, as his face never lost its
serious expression. She became angry, sitting handcuffed in the
corner. Maybe he was in the bar with Hyun-Joo because he was
following her, she wondered. Maybe he was tracking her every
movement.

Why did I not report him?

She walked through in her mind what happened
the earlier. She remembered that she would not have been able to
tell anyone in the office, because Mr. Lee was gone and Mr. Kim was
too busy to be told anything. Then Jiyeon froze.

Mr. Kim
.

Why was he staring at her last night, she
wondered? Why did he leave suddenly? Why did his phone ring? Why
did he never talk to anyone? Why did he not have any family or
friends? It all came together for Jiyeon. Mr. Kim was a North
Korean officer. She wanted to scream sitting in the putrid room.
How could nobody have put the pieces together? And Mr. Park trusted
Mr. Kim. She wanted to hit herself for not realizing it twelve
hours ago.