North Korean Blowup (27 page)

Five minutes later they dropped the IBS boats into the water off the stern and the SEALs went down a rope ladder into the bobbing craft, took their assigned place and held on. Promptly at 2130 the coxswain gunned the motor and the craft moved away from the big ship, heading due east toward shore ten miles away. They would hit eighteen knots most of the way in the calm sea. When they were within a mile of the beach they would drop to five mph and glide in with almost no motor noise.

They picked up the other IBS and charged the coast in a loose formation about twenty yards apart.

“Take us thirty minutes to hit the beach,” Tran told Hunter. “That is if we don’t run into any bad water. Big waves or a bad chop will lengthen our time.”

The moon was out full, which Hunter hated, and the water looked like a big fat lake with almost no swells and no whitecaps. The men checked each other’s gear as they waited. They all wore their Korean clothes. The soccer uniforms were strapped to their backs in waterproof wraps. They wore their issue boots and would change them in the bus once they climbed on board.

“About two minutes to the surfline,” the coxswain said passing the word up to Hunter.

“We take a swim in two,” Hunter said in his waterproof personal radio. They were new models that would both send and receive underwater. He didn’t understand how they worked, but they did. The new lapel mikes on their shirt collars were sensitive and rugged.

Hunter watched ahead. He could hear the gentle waves braking. Nothing like the four to seven foot ones they had at Coronado, but big enough to hear. “Cut the engine,” he called. “Let’s go for a swim.”

The SEALs slid over the sides of the rubber boat and gathered, and when the last man swam up, they stroked toward shore with a steady crawl that ate up the water in furious chunks. Assigned weapons and AK-74s were strapped on their backs.

Just outside the breaker line, Hunter held up a hand and the men stopped. He scanned the beach but saw no signs of any troops or guards. He spotted Bravo squad about thirty yards north. He waved the squads forward. The first two men caught a wave and body surfed in, hitting the sand and laying there like pieces of driftwood. More of the wet logs washed on shore. Hunter scanned the beach again. Twenty feet of sand, then a line of brush with a few trees beyond.

“Hit the trees,” he said in his lapel mike and they stood and raced into the cover and concealment of the band of brush and trees along the beach. There they paused.

Bravo squad came in a moment later, moved south and hooked up with Alpha and Hunter ordered squad roster calls. All chimed in on both squads.

“We move east,” he said to his mike. “We have part marsh land and part cultivated from here to the coast road which is six miles according to the map. Let’s hike. Tran out front by fifty. Regular squad formations. Move it.”

Tran ran through the line of trees and onto a harvested rice paddy where inch high stubble showed in the night light. He kept moving due east, but detoured to the left around a marshy area. He warned the troops about it and hurried on. Every fifty feet he knelt down, listened intently, and watched ahead. He could see forty or fifty feet in the bright moonlight. There was nothing to worry about. No houses, no buildings, just a continuing succession of diked rice paddies that had been stripped of every grain and every stalk. He wondered if they ate the straw or burned it?

Tran stopped suddenly, one foot in the air as he heard something ahead. It came again and he grinned. It was a wailing drawn out call of a male wolf. He’d heard calls like it in Wyoming.   Their Korea lessons told them there were still wolves in North Korea, but they were finding fewer and fewer places they could live untouched by the expanding population. He moved on.

Fifty yards from the highway, Tran stopped and waited for the squads to catch up. “I’m holding out fifty, Cap. Figured Ho might want to take a look at the area and find us a hidehole.”

“We’ll be there in five.”

A short time later Ho checked the area. He pointed south. “Many trees. Hide there.”

Hunter viewed the area with his binoculars. Binoculars magnify the chosen area, and they also magnify the available light. The grove of trees looked uninhabited.

“Let’s move that way. Ho you stay with us until we settle on our spot. Then you’ll know where to find us with the bus.”

Ten minutes later they flaked out in the thick stand of pine and hardwood trees. It would serve well to hide them until Ho returned. He hurried out to the highway. There had been numerous lights of cars and trucks going by on the road.

Tran shadowed him and stayed well back. He watched Ho holding up his hands in the headlights. He stood at the side of the road asking for a ride. Three cars went by, then a small truck stopped and Ho talked to the driver a minute. He got in and the rig moved out.

“Ho has his ride,” Tran said on the radio and hiked back to the main body to wait for the big Korean’s return.

Bradford put out a perimeter defense, and everyone settled down for a nap. There were two guards and the rest sacked out.

Hunter sat with his back against a tree and an MP-5 in his lap. He thought about Beth. She was a delight. He admired the way she had bonded with the men in the sometimes rough give and take of the banter. She did her job on the nukes with dramatic efficiency. She had weathered her first man-kill with a grim determination. Then there was the dinner the other night and the romp on the sofa in the locked private dining room. He grinned. She was something. He just might arrange to see her again when they got back to Washington. She hadn’t said where she lived, but it had to be in the general area of the capital.

They waited. It was a trait that was battered into the SEAL psyche from day one of training, and hammered home with each mission where patience wasn’t only a virtue it was a matter of life and death.

After two hours Bradford changed the guards and let the first two get some sleep. Bradford put Tran and Dengler out to watch for Ho and the bus.

“Think he’ll come back or just fade away into his home town?” Dengler asked.

“Oh hell yes he’ll come back. He’s having the time of his life. He’s never had so much fun. It sticks out all over him.”

Ho had changed back into his civilian clothes before he went to the highway. The driver of the old pickup truck wasn’t much more than twenty.

         “Where you going to late at night?” Ho asked the man.

He grinned in the faint light of the dash. “Going to see my girl friend in Sunan. Had to work late.” He looked over at Ho. “Why you out here in the country with no car?”

“Broke down, have to get some parts to fix it.”

“Bad time to find parts. Probably have to wait until morning.”

Ho agreed. The kid didn’t seem suspicious of him. He hoped it held.

A half hour later they were in Sunan. He asked the kid to let him off two blocks from his friend’s house and thanked him. It would not be polite to offer him any money for the ride. Ho hurried down the street and found the lights all out at his friend’s house. He had no watch but figured it must be past midnight. He went to the back door and pounded on it.

It took him three times before he saw a light go on and heard a door slam. A minute later the door opened a crack.

“Yeah? Who are you?”

“Hey, buddy, it’s Ho. I’ve got a problem.”

Minutes later in the small kitchen, they talked over cold beers.

“So, I can’t tell you why I need it, but I need your small bus. Have some important people to move tonight.”

“You in trouble with the police, the secret service guys?”

 Unsan was a long time friend but a little suspicious. One thing he liked was money.

“Look little buddy. I’ll buy the damned bus from you. It’s a pile of junk and always is broken down, but I need it. How much do you want for it?”

Ho took out a wad of bills that Hunter had given him. He began to peel off one hundred won notes, each worth about $50 U.S. dollars.

Unsan’s eyes went wide.

“Where you get so much money? You rob a bank?”

“Ten thousand won. I can give you ten thousand for it. Then you report it stolen and you might get it back.”

“The bus is worth fifteen thousand.”

Ho laughed. “Hell it isn’t my money. Let’s make it eleven thousand and you still might get it back.”

They shook hands and Unsan took out a ring of keys and pulled one off it and handed it to Ho. Ho counted out the bills. It almost finished off his roll. He put the remainder in his pocket.

“Now, fill up the gas tank and I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

The bus was in a garage behind the man’s house, and he used ten gallon cans to fill the tank with gasoline. Then he grinned.

“I think I did a good night’s work. And maybe get the bus back.”

“Just don’t flash around any money, and if the police come, you be sure you tell them you filed a stolen bus report first thing this morning.”

Ho waved at his friend and hoped that he didn’t get in trouble. The bus would quickly be identified as one that took part in a raid on the bomb plant and the cops might not treat him well. He shrugged. Fortunes of war, and this was a war. His side had to win.

He hurried into the main part of town where he knew there was an all night food store. He went in and came out with two large boxes jammed full of take out food. Then he was on the highway out of town and on the road to the north. He was about half way to where he had left the SEALs when bright lights down the highway flashed on and off. He frowned but slowed the bus. When the headlights picked up the source, he saw two North Korean Army six bys sitting crossways in the two lane highway. There was no way he could get around them. He slowed and stopped, taking the 9mm pistol out of his waistband and holding it low beside the driver’s door.

He rolled down the bus’s window as a soldier came up holding an AK-47.

“Well, an empty bus. Where are you going so late at night?”

“Just got it repaired in Sunan and going back home to Anju. Is there any problem?”

“Not if you have your ownership certificate and your identity papers.”

“Could I talk with your lieutenant?”

“Ha, no officer on a road stop like this. Just me and my corporal. He’s sleeping and not about to be woke up. Get out of the bus and show me your papers.”

Ho came out of the bus with his right hand behind him. As soon as his feet hit the ground he brought up the pistol and shot the soldier three times in the chest. He fell hard and didn’t move. Ho ran toward the big trucks. Before he got there the door to one of them opened and a man jumped down with his rifle at the ready.

It was twenty feet to the soldier. Ho brought up the pistol and aimed carefully. The soldier must have heard the shots but in the darkness beside the bus he couldn’t see Ho. Ho fired three times, then three more times and the soldier screamed and fell. Ho ran up and fired once more to make sure. Then he jumped in the nearest truck, found the keys in the ignition and backed it around out of the way. He went back and dragged the bodies fifty yards off the road, then threw the rifles into the brush and trees.

He hurried back to the bus, started it and drove past the trucks and slammed down the road. No one would miss the soldiers before they were relieved at dawn. He had a chance to get away clean. He thought for a minute about killing the two men. It had to be done. There were a million lives depending on how well he did his job tonight and tomorrow. He was determined not to let down a million of his countrymen.

It was just past 0300 when the two SEAL scouts saw another set of lights coming up the highway. They had checked out more than a dozen such headlamps in the past. This time the lights belonged to a pale green bus and it slowed as it came to the grove of trees along the highway. When Tran saw it was a bus, he jumped out into the road where the headlights would wash over him. The bus slowed more and then pulled off the road at a wide place and the door opened.

“Hey, want ride?” Ho asked.

Tran used his radio. “Commander, your taxi is here and it’s got a big grin on its Korean face.”

“Roger that, Tran. Will gather up the chicks and move your direction. Give us ten.”

The bus had thirty seats. Tran could not decide what make it was and it showed numerous repairs and repainting. The windows were all intact, but the seats had been gouged and burned by cigarettes and there was the definite odor of many unwashed bodies who had used the rig.

The SEALs settled in most using two seats, and Hunter told them to get into their soccer uniforms. They were going to need them shortly. He checked the time.  It was 0315. He talked to Ho.

“Any trouble?”

“I bought bus like you said. Eleven thousand won.” He held out the pistol. “Had to use at roadblock. Two soldiers.”

Hunter released the magazine and looked at it. It was light, maybe half full.

“Will anyone come looking for us?”
        “No. No radio. Two hid.”

“Good. Without you we’d be in deep shit here, my friend.” He slapped Ho on the back. “Now back to business. Did you see the two stunted pine trees and the tumbled down house where we turn off?”

“Not south. More north.”

“Okay. It’s close by somewhere and then we have only fifteen miles to go to the new village. We’ll be too early. When would the best time be to get to the gate?”

“Nine o’clock,” Ho said.

“That’s six hours from now. We need to find a place off the highway where we can hide the bus. Shouldn’t take us more than an hour to get from here to our target. See what you can find.”
     Ten minutes later, Ho pulled the bus off the two lane highway into a side road that wound into a small valley. Two hundred yards from the highway was a large patch of woods, with several kinds of hardwood trees, some brush, and some pines. The bus slid into a small opening and was invisible from the highway.

“Guys, we have six hours to kill. Up to you. Sleep, wet dreams, whatever. That’s after the surprise Ho has for you.”

Ho went to the back of the bus and brought up two big cardboard boxes filled with sweet rolls, sandwiches, a can of cooked baby shrimp, boxes of crackers. He made a second trip and brought up three cases of 24 cans each of Coca Cola.