Foxbat (6 page)

Kwon In-Ho, the
chung-wi,
or
lieutenant, leading the patrol, had a real problem. They’d spotted the black-clad figure leaving the road and starting to cutting across an adjacent field, which gave them an accurate
reference point for their pursuit. The problem now was that, as they’d moved further away from the road, their search fan had of necessity become wider until, Kwon estimated, there were
now gaps of fifty to seventy metres separating his soldiers. And that kind of spacing meant there was a good chance their quarry could elude them simply by taking cover somewhere, and then
doubling back once they’d passed by. Or he could have moved right over to one side, well away from the searchers, and then carried on heading into the hills in front of them.

In short, having failed to find their man within the first few minutes, they were now probably
just wasting their time. Reluctantly, Kwon called his troops to a halt, and made radio contact with his superior. The response was exactly as he’d expected: he was ordered to return his
patrol immediately to T’ae’tan, and then report to the commanding officer. Within the North Korean military, there was no excuse for failure to achieve an objective: such failure
was always considered to be either deliberate sabotage or dereliction of duty, no matter what the extenuating circumstances.

Meanwhile, at T’ae’tan, the unhappy lieutenant’s immediate superior, Lee
Chang-Ho, the
tab-wi
or captain, shut down his radio and gazed with foreboding at the secure telephone nearby. He could certainly put
blame on Kwon for not capturing the spy, but he himself might also suffer, if it could be shown that his original orders to the lieutenant had in some way been inaccurate or insufficiently
comprehensive. But,
whatever the outcome of the night’s activities, he knew he would have to pass on the unwelcome news to Pyongyang.

Lee reached for the telephone and dialled the number he’d scribbled on a notepad. When Pak
Je-San himself answered, the captain explained briefly what had happened, stressing how the failure to capture the infiltrator was entirely due to the incompetence of Kwon and his men. When
he finished speaking there was an ominous silence before Pak responded.

‘I will discuss this fiasco with your commanding officer later today,’ he hissed.
‘Neither you nor the idiot you tasked are to leave the base until further notice.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Now, thanks to your abysmal failure, we still have a South Korean spy at large
within the area. Fortunately, I believe I know what his objective is, and there may still be time to retrieve the situation. Do you think you can find some men – more competent this
time – who can carry out a series of simple instructions?’

‘Of course.’

‘Since this may be the only chance you’ll get to salvage your career, you should
listen carefully.’

For three minutes the captain jotted down sentences on his notepad. When the call ended, he sat
for a few seconds reviewing what he’d written, then reached for the internal telephone.

Dekker’s driver immediately hit the brakes and slammed his own vehicle to a halt,
headlights illuminating the wreckage of its comrade, and the SAS men swung smoothly into action. Two of them leapt out and raced over to the crashed Land Rover. Dekker stood up and looked all
around behind them, checking on the positions of the pursuing vehicles, then also jumped out to help. Wallace remained in place and took careful aim with the Browning. Grabbing a 203, Richter
climbed out of the Pinky, moved well over to one side of the crash site and took up a position beside a large boulder. If he got fired at, the last thing he wanted
was
bullets missing him but hitting the injured soldiers behind him. He aimed the weapon towards the path of the approaching vehicles, but held fire till the range reduced enough to allow for
accuracy with the small-calibre assault rifle.

The Algerian jeeps were about two hundred yards away as Wallace started firing off bursts of
three or four rounds at a time, the most efficient and accurate way to use the weapon, with the bonus of conserving ammunition. A headlight on the leading jeep was shot out immediately, and
then the vehicle slammed to a halt. It seemed likely the Browning’s bullets had done terminal damage to either the engine or the transmission.

The second jeep doused its lights and turned away, heading for cover over to the right.
Basic Infantry Tactics 101: Split your forces so as to deny the enemy the ability to concentrate all his firepower on a single area.
Unfortunately, Dekker’s men couldn’t do likewise.

The sky was brightening quickly, desert dawns being usually of short duration, and Richter could
just make out the shapes of the soldiers climbing out of the crippled jeep. But, as he noted, they weren’t running away but taking up positions to return fire. And seconds later the
rattle of their Kalashnikovs became a distant counterpoint to Wallace’s steady bursts of firing.

At that range their AK47s were hopelessly inaccurate, and Richter wondered why one of them
hadn’t stayed in the halted jeep to use the heavy machine-gun. Moments later, the same thought obviously occurred to one of the Algerians, who ran back and climbed into the abandoned
vehicle.

‘I see him,’ Wallace called out, before Richter could speak. ‘Take the
Browning.’

Wallace grabbed his sniper rifle and stepped away from the Pinky. The Starlight scope and the
heavier-calibre bullets – 7.62mm against the 203’s 5.56mm – would make a huge difference. He dropped flat on the ground, spread the bipod legs and settled himself into the
aiming position.

Richter grasped the Browning, pointed it at the jeep and fired a series of short bursts.

Then the machine-gun on the Algerian vehicle replied, tracer arcing
towards them as the soldier corrected his aim. Bullets smashed into the nearby rocks, sending shards and splinters whizzing through the air. Kalashnikov bullets howled overhead,
but it was the machine-gun that would kill them, if Wallace couldn’t find his mark soon.

Richter glanced down as he heard a shot from the sniper rifle, and instantly the Algerian
machine-gun fell silent. Looking ahead, he saw a bulky shape tumble backwards out of the jeep, and then shifted his aim from the vehicle to the muzzle flashes of the Kalashnikovs. He
wasn’t hopeful of actually hitting any of the Algerian soldiers, but if he could make them keep their heads down, and convince them that trying to get back behind the machine-gun was a
really bad idea, it might be enough.

He looked around him. Dekker and four SAS troopers were struggling to free one of their comrades
whose leg was trapped under the wreckage of the crashed Pinky, and beside them another soldier lay ominously still on the ground, his head at an unnatural angle to his body.

Then the second Algerian jeep drove back into view, the driver making for a group of rocks over
to their right, with the clear intention of trying to outflank them. Richter swung the Browning around on its mount and fired a six-round burst, but the vehicle was too quick for him. It
reached the shelter of the boulders and lurched to a halt, and he had no doubt that within a matter of seconds they’d be taking fire from two positions simultaneously. They had to start
moving out, and quickly.

‘Colin,’ he called. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘We’re ready,’ Dekker gasped, as he and two other troopers lifted a wounded
comrade into the Pinky. The soldier was obviously in great pain, his left leg below the knee a bloody mess, a section of bone protruding below the makeshift tourniquet someone had applied.
Yet as soon as they’d got him seated, the man painfully reached for a 203 and brought it up to the ready position.

Dekker and his men went back to the wrecked Land Rover and returned moments later carrying
another soldier, but this one was clearly beyond medical help. Silently, they laid the body in the rear section of the vehicle.

‘Broken neck,’ Dekker muttered shortly. ‘Right, everyone, mount up. John,
get us out of here.’

The driver climbed into his seat, jammed the Land Rover into gear,
and
gunned the engine. Wallace resumed his position at the Browning machine-gun, heedless of the bullets still spraying all around them, and fired a long burst that traversed from left to right,
to include most of the positions where the Algerian soldiers might have taken cover. Two of the others followed his example with their assault rifles, while Richter and Dekker joined in by
firing forty-millimetre grenades from a couple of the 203s.

Just thirty seconds after they took off, Richter heard an explosion close behind. The
overturned Pinky had exploded in a ball of fire.

‘High explosive and thermite?’ he asked, above the din of the automatic-weapon
fire.

‘You got it,’ Dekker said, changing the magazine on his 203. ‘No better way to
sanitize that vehicle.’

In the pale light of early morning, Yi Min-Ho watched silently as the searching soldiers
paused in their advance and assembled in a field lying about three hundred metres below his vantage point. He at first presumed they were being briefed on new search tactics, but after a
minute they turned and headed back towards the road where their lorry was parked.

It looked as if the pursuit had been called off, but Yi feared that it might be a diversionary
tactic, encouraging him to stand up and resume his journey. They could easily have left a couple of men behind, hidden in the undergrowth, waiting for him to move, so for ten minutes he lay
there motionless, scanning the fields below with his binoculars. But there was no sign of life and he was certain the army lorry had definitely left the area, having watched it drive away
down the road leading to the east, the sound of its exhaust gradually fading into silence.

Yi carefully checked the land lying above him, identifying the next available cover. He eased up
into a low crouch, backed away from his hiding place and moved slowly up the hill. When he reached another clump of bushes, he slid in behind it and again studied the land below through his
binoculars. Still nothing moved.

Cautiously, he stood upright for just five seconds, then ducked down again. No shots were
fired, and the hillside remained empty and innocent-looking. They must have gone, he decided, whereupon he turned and ran quickly up the slope, stopping after a couple of hundred metres to
check behind him again. He should be at least five hundred metres from where he’d last seen his pursuers, so unless some stay-behinds had somehow out-flanked him, he was already beyond
effective range of their weapons.

He shrugged, and strode on, now making for a gap in the Kungnaksan range of hills that rose in
front of him. His objective, T’ae’tan Air Base, lay directly to the east, but his aim was to get himself to the north side of the runway, so he chose a longer, north-eastern
route.

The Pinky was now overloaded by any standards. Designed to carry only four or five, it
currently had nine on board, one of them dead and another badly injured. The rest hung on as best they could as the driver pushed the vehicle to its limits, the Land Rover bouncing and
jolting alarmingly over the rough surface.

But hanging on was the least of their worries. About five hundred yards behind them, and gaining
steadily, was the remaining Algerian jeep. Its driver clearly knew the terrain, and was currently following a parallel route across the desert that looked a lot smoother. His machine-gunner
would fire occasional bursts after the fleeing Land Rover, with almost no chance of finding his mark in those conditions and at that range.

Half a mile further behind, two other sets of headlights bored through the morning twilight. The
three-ton trucks had not given up the chase.

‘Foxtrot November, Alpha One,’ said Dekker into his radio microphone, almost
having to shout over the roar of the turbo-charged diesel and the rattling of equipment. ‘We’re heading back, with hostiles in pursuit. We’re now in one vehicle only. I say
again, one vehicle only. Our
estimate is minutes zero six. Get those engines started, and drop the ramp.’

‘Alpha One, roger. Call when you’re thirty seconds out, and we’ll hit the
lights and start rolling.’

The Algerian jeep had closed to less than three hundred yards, and its machine-gun started up
again, bullets striking the rocks around them, uncomfortably close. Though none actually hit the Land Rover, Richter guessed it was only a matter of time.

‘We’re not going to make it unless we stop those bastards,’ Dekker called
out.

‘Fucking risky. If we slow down they’ll be all over us.’

‘Yes, but if we don’t they’ll catch us before we get to the plane. John, next
big clump of rocks you see, dive behind it and stop. Then kill the lights.’

‘Got it, boss.’

Two minutes later the headlights picked out a handful of large boulders off to the right of
their path.

‘That’ll do,’ Dekker called, and the Pinky changed course slightly to make
towards them. ‘We’ll try to discourage them a bit, so use grenades.’

Richter, Dekker and two of the troopers began loading forty-millimetre grenades into their 203s.
Then, on Dekker’s command, they fired them back towards the vehicle in pursuit. There was no chance of hitting it, but this sudden display of firepower might make the Algerians back
off.

The driver braked hard – the vehicle had no rear lights, so the pursuers wouldn’t
notice it slowing down – and slewed the Pinky around in a circle behind the rocks. He switched off the headlights as he came to a halt.

‘Dave, you take the Browning. Everyone else, spread out. Don’t fire until I give
the order.’

Richter checked the magazine on his 203, found he had only four rounds left. He paused to change
it, then ran over to a boulder looming by itself. He aimed the assault rifle towards the approaching jeep and waited.

The Algerian vehicle had already slowed down, and it suddenly
veered off,
heading away from their location. Somebody on board must have noticed that their quarry’s lights had vanished, and guessed they could be driving into a trap.

‘Fuck, these guys are good,’ Dekker muttered. ‘Dave, hit them with the
Browning. Everyone else, get back in the Pinky. John, take us out of here – no lights.’

Wallace fired off several short bursts from the machine-gun, but the enemy jeep was already
virtually invisible behind a rocky outcrop.

‘Grenades, go,’ Dekker ordered, and the night air filled with the sound of
explosions as the Land Rover accelerated away.

They’d covered only about a quarter of a mile when Richter spotted the jeep behind them
again, with its headlights switched off. The sky was lightening almost by the minute, and the Algerians had obviously seen the Land Rover get moving again. And now the visibility was good
enough to enable fast driving without any lights at all.

‘How far to the Herky-bird?’ Richter inquired.

Dekker checked his GPS. ‘Around a mile and a half.’ Just then the machine-gun
mounted on the pursuing jeep began firing again.

Wallace immediately stood up, grasped the Browning, and began returning fire. Meanwhile, two of
the SAS soldiers loosed off with their 203s. As before, the Pinky kept bouncing around too much for accurate shooting, but their onslaught might help keep the Algerians at a suitable
distance.

‘Foxtrot November, Alpha One. We’re approaching one mile. Are you ready for
us?’

‘Affirmative, Alpha One. We’re turning and burning, ramp down, lights
off.’

Dekker looked back to check the position of the Algerian jeep, then focused forward, searching
for the C-130. ‘There it is.’ He tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed.

‘I see it now.’

The Land Rover swerved slightly so as to approach the Hercules from directly behind.

‘Foxtrot November, thirty seconds.’

‘Roger.’

In front of them, the cargo-bay lights of the transport aircraft
suddenly
flared into life, so they could see the steel ramp clearly now. They could also see the four Allison turbo-prop engines, with their propellers spinning ever faster as the pilot opened the
throttles to start the seventy-ton aircraft moving across the rock-strewn surface of the desert.

Behind them, the Algerian soldiers had obviously also spotted the aircraft, and their jeep now
began closing the gap. Wallace quit firing in controlled bursts and let loose an almost continuous stream of bullets at their pursuers. One or two seemed to hit the jeep, but it didn’t
slow down, and still the Algerian machine-gunner kept shooting at them. More in hope than expectation, Richter aimed another three grenades at the vehicle, following those with a couple of
bursts of 5.56-millimetre bullets.

‘Foxtrot November, twenty seconds,’ Dekker estimated. ‘John, better get this
right or else.’

The Hercules was already accelerating away from them, its speed rising steadily. They were now
looking straight at the lowered ramp, the two loadmasters standing either side of it at the top, carefully watching their approach.

‘Ten seconds.’

A long burst of fire from the pursuing vehicle raised clouds of dust just to the left of the
Land Rover. The driver flinched, twitching the wheel momentarily to the right before resuming his course.

‘Five seconds.’

The Hercules was accelerating through forty knots as the Pinky hit the ramp at fifty miles an
hour. Its front wheels bounced, and for a sickening moment Richter feared that the vehicle might lose so much momentum that it wouldn’t make it. But as their driver kept his foot flat
on the accelerator, the four-wheel drive kicked in and the Land Rover lurched safely into the cavernous hold, slewing sideways as he hit the brakes.

Almost before it had halted, Richter could hear the whine as one of the loadmasters pressed a
button to raise the ramp behind them. The aircraft instantly began accelerating faster, blowing clouds of desert dust and sand behind it.

The Algerian jeep stopped a couple of hundred yards away, to allow the machine-gunner a stable
platform. He took careful aim and fired one
long continuous burst straight at the rear of the departing aircraft’s fuselage.

The first bullets impacted as the ramp slammed shut, punching easily through the thin aluminium
and ricocheting off anything solid in their way.

‘Get down,’ Dekker yelled, and the SAS men tumbled out of the Land Rover and threw
themselves flat on the floor of the hold. The two loadmasters moved to follow their example, but one of them got caught in the leg by a couple of the bullets and screamed in agony.

Then the Hercules bounced twice and lifted into the air. Climbing swiftly away, it turned
south-west, heading for the safety of the Moroccan border.