One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel (12 page)

“Absolutely not!” Fontaine said.

“Share nuke secrets? Defect? Make JSOC’s kill list?” Carlos said, simply outlining the logical possibilities.

“You’re warm, sir,” Canary said.

Fontaine slammed his soda bottle down the moment Carlos mentioned JSOC, swallowed heavily, and barely allowed his colleague to get his last syllable out before jumping in.

“That’s enough!” Fontaine held the palm of his right hand up in front of Canary’s face. “Mr. Menendez might have the appropriate security clearance, but he hasn’t been read on to the SAP and doesn’t have a need to know.”

“Pardon me, sir,” Carlos said without hiding the sarcasm, “that’s bullshit. I dropped everything to fly here; you can tell me what is so urgent. You owe me that.”

Carlos felt the heat of Fontaine’s pointed look but didn’t dare budge. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Fontaine turned to look at Canary, whose face was pink from embarrassment. Carlos couldn’t be sure exactly what was up, or what America’s plans might be for Kang Pang Su, but he did know one thing for sure. You didn’t need to be an intelligence genius to know that Kang Pang Su had finally tired of being one of Kim Jong Un’s improved citizens.

“Okay, but just the basics,” Fontaine said. “Marzban Tehrani. Kang Pang Su says Tehrani is linked to North Korea.”

“Tehrani?” Carlos said. “Linked to the nukes?” Carlos already knew all about Iranian Marzban Tehrani. For over a year, Tungsten had been tracking the CIA cable traffic that placed Tehrani in Pyongyang several times. In fact, he had initially considered embedding Kolt Raynor for the mission, if the National Command Authority had green-lighted them. But, since Kolt’s flare-up at Yellow Creek power plant and his subsequent return to Delta, he was considering other options. No, Fontaine didn’t need to say another word. Carlos could put the pieces together now.

“I said the basics, Mr. Menendez. You understand.”

SEVEN

Whistle-stop, final phase

This college punk touches my thigh one more time, I’m taking him out.

It had been a relatively simple and peaceful train trip returning from Pyongyang, North Korea, that Saturday morning. Hawk and the other tourists had boarded the domestic train before the sun was up to return to Sinuiju, the open port city on the western edge of North Korea. Sinuiju was the last stop before crossing the Yalu River, which also served as the international border.

Hawk and her fellow tourists had offloaded the train before being herded into a large train station that Hawk couldn’t help notice was relatively devoid of locals, but full of the same straight-faced and uber-suspicious uniformed types she had come to expect after her seven-day tour inside the hermit kingdom.

Consistent with every other dreary place Hawk and the other tourists had visited in North Korea, the station was adorned with chintzy chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and crooked gilded mosaics of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung stuck on three of the four boring white walls. Closer to the marble floor, other brass placards and dioramas pimped the history of Sinuiju’s commercial growth. First with logging lumber down the Yalu, then advancing to the chemical industry after the hydroelectric Sup’ung Dam was built farther up the river.

Hawk’s attention had been drawn to one placard in particular, and he had been relieved when her tense reaction hadn’t alerted the minders to finger her for further scrutiny. The display was a large overhead photo, taken from a plane for sure, of the city after it sustained heavy damage, including to the dam, from U.S. Air Force strategic bombing during the Korean War.

Customs officials had asked the usual questions, reminded them about the punishment for smuggling out Korean artifacts or contraband, and warned of passing information about North Korean citizens to outsiders. Just as they had done when they entered a week ago, the officials had the Korean conductors and tourists open all their packages before finally returning their passports and their mobile phones, sealed in yellow envelopes marked with the owner’s passport number.

Having to operate without her tech gadgets hadn’t been an issue for Hawk. The country study she’d read before deploying was clear about that. North Korean officials would definitely confiscate all electronics, forcing her to commit her tasks to memory. The silver lining, she knew, was that she had less to keep track of and therefore less that might get her in trouble. Sure, she wasn’t there on a simple culmination exercise, as every other Whistle-stop had been for hundreds of wannabe operators before her. In Hawk’s case, she was thrown to the wolves after the CIA had come up empty on their longtime deep asset, Kang Pang Su. Nobody in Langley seemed to have a clue about Su, much less be able to distinguish him from the Korean owner of the dry cleaner’s on Dolly Madison Boulevard. No, Hawk wasn’t asked to assassinate anyone in North Korea, rather work her God-given magic, and her operator skills and instincts, to grab a bead on the asset himself—enough, it was hoped, to sit down with an FBI sketch artist, to give the agency a starting point.

But, hope wasn’t an operational method, and on this particular mission, Hawk was an abject failure.

Hawk repressed the urge to curse. Sure, she’d had no luck with locating the asset, but she had learned some interesting things during her weeklong visit. Nothing anyone would really consider a state secret, but at least she wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

There was the drunk at the government-monitored hotel who had a problem with insam-ju, a Korean vodka infused with ginseng roots. Making a meager income shining tourists’ shoes by day, the rickety old man spent twice that each night at the bar. Hawk was still slightly ashamed for taking advantage of a drunk and horny guy, as eliciting sensitive information from him had been truly elementary. With her iPad back, she’d type up the stuff about the stealth netting supposedly protecting Kim Jong Un’s armored train from remote IEDs and secure message it to Bragg, but that could wait. She’d get to it, maybe in the morning; no need to share the bad news too early with Webber and the intel shop back at Bragg. No, it could wait, she decided, and figured she’d seek out one of the flat-screen TVs, maybe the one in the recreation car, where tourists could relax a little and have a drink or two.

Nonchalantly opening her passport to ensure it hadn’t been mixed up with someone else’s, she noticed some kind of registration stamp and another odd stamp, ostensibly the magic mark allowing them to leave the isolated country via Sinuiju.

Hawk held up her left hand and turned her diamond wedding band toward the twenty-something with the hard-on. “You’ve had too much. I’ve told you a dozen times, I’m happily married.”

Hawk knew the Pyongyang-to-Moscow trip would take 211 hours, but feel like a million if she stayed cooped up inside her sleeper, or
kupe,
a four-bed-compartment car. Sure, she was amped up in a good way, knowing that as soon as she returned to Bragg she’d be sitting down for her Commander’s Board, the final gate in her quest for knighting as an operator. But, even with her Droid back, and her iPad 4, she knew she needed to let her hair down after the stressful, and equally unsuccessful, visit inside North Korea.

Yes, vagabonder Carrie Tomlinson—at least that’s how she was known to anyone asking—had been stoked to finally cross the Yalu and enter China. It was the longest direct train connection in the world, some 10,272 kilometers in all, and she figured no harm, no foul if she spent the first couple of thousand partying like Paris Hilton before her liquid breakfast settled.

In fact, at the moment, Hawk had to admit she was buzzed enough that focusing on her front sight if she was busting plates back at the Unit might be a little challenging. Even so, Hawk, rather Carrie for this op, was comfortably kicking the shit out of these spring break college kids from West Virginia University in some adolescent drinking game.

It was well known for being one of the biggest party schools in the United States, something Jerud (or was it Jason; one of the six undergrads from Mr. Beckle’s International Studies and Enrichment Club) must have shared a dozen times by now. Cindy Bird knew working an alias was everything, and if she had learned anything over the last few years within Delta, it was that cover is truth, truth is cover.

But Hawk couldn’t deny the kid was pretty Brad Pitt hot.

“C’mon, Carrie, chill out, girl,” Jerud said. “A ring don’t plug no hole.”

Hawk couldn’t believe the arrogance of this kid. She had been out of college for a good six or seven years now and she was pretty darn certain no other male had ever hit on her with the free spirit of a wild animal in, well, the wild. Hell, even her Green Beret boyfriend, the cock-strong and cocky Troy toy, was never this aggressive.

No, Hawk knew, assuming she could keep it together, this kid wasn’t adding a notch to his trophy stock on this spring break. Maybe he would with one of the two university bimbos who were totally shit-faced across the table, the one two-fisting locally made Taedonggang beer bottles all night, or the one trying to make whistle noises by blowing over the mouth of an empty. Just not with Hawk.

“Look, pal, you’re cute, I’ll give you that much,” Hawk said as she lifted the kid’s left hand off her right thigh. “What was all that you said earlier about having an obligation and responsibility to conduct research? Something about your mission of gathering and analyzing data to inform the discussion and understanding of various issues affecting the lives of others around the world?”

“You’ve got a good memory,” Jerud said, slurring words. “But what’s your problem? Live a little, it’s just social sex.”

“You’re doable,” Hawk said. “Not my type, though.”

“C’mon, no way you’re married and in North Korea getting liquored up by yourself.”

“We’re not in North Korea anymore, but maybe it’s just a lifelong desire to travel the world’s oddest places,” Hawk said. “And apparently meet the world’s biggest assholes.”

“Whatever,” Jerud said as he leaned toward Hawk, his left arm circling around her before coming to rest on her shoulder blades.

Hawk looked at Jerud, sending a silent but deadly warning with her eyes. Jerud obviously wasn’t worried, or he couldn’t effectively gauge the coiled snake, taunted by an intruder, through his beer goggles.

Jerud leaned into Hawk, his eyes turning savage and his lips now bunched. Hawk froze, turned her face away from his beer breath, and stuck in an elbow just below the floating rib.

“Enough already!” Hawk said.

“Relax, baby,” Jerud said, “you might like it.”

Jerud reached up with his right hand and squeezed Hawk’s right breast.

Son of a bitch! That’s it!

Hawk raised her right arm high and circled it over Jerud’s left arm, coming down with enough force to break his touch and trap his left hand under her right armpit.

“Now you’re talking,” Jerud slurred. “You like it rough, huh?”

Instantly, Hawk let go of the half-empty bottle of Taedonggang beer she was nursing in her left hand and made a half fist, leaving two fingers sticking out. She looked Jerud in the eye.

“Yes, I guess you could say that, college boy.”

Hawk spread the two fingers and jammed one in each of Jerud’s eyes. Jerud’s head bounced back and he let out a raging cry. Still controlling the left arm, Hawk slipped out of her chair and in one smooth motion delivered a face-palm with her left hand, just below his freckled nose, then pulled his left arm forward and to the right.

Defenseless, Jerud fell out of his chair and doormatted to the car’s white-tiled floor, flat on his back. Hawk stood, catching the other partiers out of the corner of her eye, now standing as well. They were screaming something, likely wanting to see what the chaos was about, but Hawk ignored them, focusing instead on the correct attack angle.

Controlling the left arm from the right side of his supine torso, Hawk stepped over Jerud’s chest with her left foot and simultaneously jumped into the air. She fell back on her ass and brought the arm with her, locking her left leg over his chest and her right leg over his face. Not entirely textbook, given the alcohol, but the arm lock was good enough to hear Jerud squeal.

Hawk turned Jerud’s thumb upward toward the
obshchiy
passenger car’s white ceiling, centered by a gaudy brass chandelier, and aligned the elbow joint as she gave slight pressure.

“Now, Jerud, you have a choice,” Hawk said as the other college kids were fumbling with their cell phones, probably to capture the scene on Instagram. “You can go back to the frat house with a broken arm, or you can go back to your sleeper for the rest of the night. Your choice.”

“Let go!” Jerud screamed. “Get this girl off me!”

“Nope, Jerud, that isn’t one of your choices,” Hawk said as she applied more pressure to the elbow joint. She didn’t want to break the kid’s arm; in fact, even though Jerud and his friends didn’t know it, Hawk was just bluffing. She knew he was just another hard-up spoiled frat boy used to getting his way, not a hardened terrorist intent on jihad.

Jerud screamed again.

“Choose, Jerud,” Hawk said, just before hearing one of the bimbos screaming.

“Get off of him,” she said. “Oh my God!”

“Which one, Jerud?” Hawk asked again.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Jerud said as his face tightened in obvious pain. “I’ll leave your ass alone, let’s just get back to the game.”

“Broken arm or sleeper car?” Hawk said.

“Okay, shit, fucking shit, man, I’ll go to my sleeper,” Jerud resigned himself to say.

“You’re familiar with the honor system, right, Jerud?” Hawk said. “You leave your sleeper before the sun comes up and you’ve sobered, and I’ll break both your bony-ass legs, got me?”

“Okay, okay, honor system,” Jerud said. “I got it.”

Hawk rotated Jerud’s arm to allow it to bend at the elbow, gave up wrist control, and somersaulted backwards. Just in case the asshole had any thoughts of immediate retaliation, she put some distance between them.

If this wasn’t Whistle-stop, assholes, I’d—

Before Hawk could finish the thought, two Korean customs officials corralled her, bookending her on both arms, and practically lifted her off the ground while dragging her toward the end of the car.