One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel (15 page)

The hopping Russian handed the bottle to his partner before unbuckling his utility belt and dropping it to the dirt. He said something in Russian, something obviously evil and dark, as he unbuttoned his pants, letting them free drop to the ground only a foot behind Olga. The Russian waddled forward as if he were a convict in chains on death row, staring hard at her backside.

Olga yelled out, but not in fear. It was pure hatred.

Kolt turned his head half back to Slapshot, trying to keep one eye on the three Russian troops fully illuminated by the facing truck’s headlights.

“I’m left, you got right,” Kolt whispered. “On three.”

“Rog.”

“How do you say ‘hands up’ in Russian?” Kolt asked.

“I’d try something crazy like ‘Drop your weapons!’” Slapshot said.

“That’ll work,” Kolt said, ignoring his mate’s sarcasm.

A single rifle shot rang out from close by.

“Shit! Moving!”

Kolt raised to a crouch and advanced forward, leaving the security of darkness. He extended his 1911 at full elbow lock and sighted the gold bead front sight post on a Russian eye orbit. He knew Slapshot would be mirroring him, his weapon up, looking to eliminate the threat in his sector.

The Russian that had been sitting on top of Olga was now on his feet, standing victorious over Dmitry, his AKMS in both hands, pointed at the Alfa man’s supine body. The Russian struggled to yank his thirty-round magazine out of his rifle, then reached under the rifle and pulled the charging handle to the rear.

Weapon jam!

The Russian must have felt the presence of unwanted company as he turned his head half around to the right. In an instant, he alerted on the unknown danger, high-stepped over Dmitry’s body, dropped his rifle and magazine to the dirt, and kicked it into high gear.

“Putin’s a pussy!” Kolt yelled, following the threat as he cleared the front right corner of Dimitry’s broke-dick truck.

Kolt left the danger of the headlights and tracked the Russian into the dark. The Russian was in a dead sprint, yelling like a baby, having lost the killer persona he played so well when things were going his way.

Kolt wasn’t about to chase him all night. There were two other shitbags still back there and he didn’t want to miss out.

Kolt braked, spread his boots shoulder width apart for balance, and pushed the gun to full extension. He thumbed the ambi switch of his SureFire X300 Ultra to momentary-on with his support hand, capturing the fleeing Russian from his hatless head down to his asshole inside a white beam of five hundred lumens. Kolt leaned into it, driving the front sight to center mass of the Russian’s shoulder blades, and broke the trigger twice, putting a controlled pair of .45 caliber ball into the man’s narrow back.

Kolt let off the light, then back on, picking up the crumpled man’s body lying on the edge of the dirt road.

Kolt turned back to his mates, wondering what had happened. He hadn’t heard any shots from Slapshot. In a few steps, he was close to the right fender of their truck.

“Eagle, Eagle!” Kolt said, letting them know he was a friendly.

Kolt squinted as he stepped in front of the dueling headlights, his left boot inadvertently finding a slick puddle, causing him to lose his balance.

Dmitry’s blood.

Catching himself before he tumbled, his pistol at the low ready, Kolt went down to both knees, landing on Dmitry’s skinny legs.

“I thought we weren’t going loud?” Slapshot asked. “Intel value, wasn’t it?”

Kolt tried to make sense of the scene. Digger, still naked, was on his back. He had one of the Russians in what looked like a solid rear naked choke, obviously holding pressure on his larynx as the Russian flapped his hands wildly, desperate for oxygen. Digger’s left leg was wrapped around the Russian’s waist, just over his half-limp penis and hairy, white thighs. His right stub leg, pointing skyward, provided leverage as he locked in the choke.

Close by, Slapshot’s target was facedown and lights out. Slapshot had just finished flex-tying the man’s wrists behind his back and was moving down to the Russian’s ankles.

“He dead?” Kolt asked, hoping he wasn’t the only one that had used lethal force. After all, the whole capture idea was his.

“I pistol-whipped him.”

Kolt shook his head, half in disbelief, half in amazement, before breaking the spell and moving to help Digger. Slapshot threw Kolt two flex ties, which Kolt used to fasten the other sleeping Russian’s ankles. Digger rolled out of the way, letting Kolt turn the guy over and secure his wrists.

“Get dressed, brother,” Kolt said. “That was legend right there.”

“Bite me, Racer,” Digger said, unable to hide his relief that the ruse actually worked. “You owe me big-time.”

“Indeed,” Kolt said as he watched Digger hop out of the headlight’s footprint and back to the tailgate.

Kolt turned to Olga, happy to see her alive. She had pulled her pants up and was leaning over Dmitry, her hand under his neck, checking for a pulse, not wanting to give up on her fellow operative just yet.

“These are Starinov’s babies,” Olga said.

“Who?” Kolt asked.

“Colonel Starinov. He is the grandfather of Russian special forces.”

“Spetsnaz?” Kolt asked. “For sure?”

Olga collected herself and stood up. She noticed her cap on the ground and knelt like a woman to retrieve it, bending at the knees and not the waist. With one hand she whipped her hair into a bun and slipped the blue-and-white conductor’s hat back on her head, taking a long second to position it just right.

Kolt watched her every move, impressed by her demeanor and composure with Dmitry’s blood-puddled body so close. Kolt assumed the two Alfa operatives were tight, at least as compatriots, maybe more.

“We gotta get going, boss,” Slapshot said. “We taking these two with us?”

Kolt let the question sink in for a moment, until his thoughts were interrupted by Olga walking toward him.

She kneeled next to the Russian soldier Digger had napped out and reached toward his head, grabbing a piece of two-inch-wide orange-and-black ribbon attached to the soldier’s left shoulder epaulet. She rubbed the knot between her fingers to untie it.

“The Order of St. George,” she said, holding the ten-inch-or-so-long ribbon in the air. “Russia’s nationalist pride. All Spetsnaz wear one when the Kremlin declares war.”

Olga handed the ribbon to Kolt. He studied it for a few seconds before sharing with Slapshot.

“If you wear one of these the locals know you’re Russian special forces?” Slapshot asked.

“Yes,” Olga said, not taking her dark eyes off of the defenseless Russian sprawled at her side. “Even the traitors, Ukrainians who are pro-Russian separatists, are afraid of them.”

Kolt stood, holstered his blaster, and started toward Dmitry’s body. “No debate. We’re taking everyone. Even the dead.”

Kolt grabbed Dmitry by the left arm and rolled him over on his back.

“NO!” Slapshot yelled.

Kolt turned, surprised by his mate’s disregard for noise discipline, but intrigued by what he was yelling about. It was too late.

Two-handing a knife, Olga lifted it out of the back of the neck of the Russian she had pulled the St. George’s ribbon from. She spoke in Russian, saying something poetic for sure, certainly laced with vengeance and horror for Dmitry’s death.

Slapshot jumped in to grab her.

“Slap!” Kolt said. “At ease!”

Slapshot froze, looked hard at Kolt, then, understanding, stepped back.

Olga turned to lock eyes with Kolt, but only for a moment before turning back around. She raised the knife with both hands high in the air, like a wounded woman possessed, and slammed the bloody blade down like she was swinging a sledgehammer at the pivotboard of a traveling carnival.

Olga retracted the knife from the neck, repeated her deep-seated verbal hatred, and struck again.

And again, and again.

TEN

Sonchon, North Korea

Kang Pang Su powered up the teletypewriter, knowing his life as he knew it was coming to an end. It should have been more shocking, he thought, but everyone had their breaking point. His had come slowly over the decades until he simply couldn’t take any more.

A message blinked onto the screen—
DISPLAY ERROR/POWER
. Kang sat back. Now that he’d made up his mind, would he be thwarted by a technical malfunction? Forcing himself to remain calm, Kang reached behind the teletypewriter, feeling for the 1985 operator’s manual taped to the back. He yanked it off, and turned to the back section.

Yes, turn the RTTY off and retest the initiation sequence.

Kang reached for the red toggle switch to power down the device, but before he did, he noticed an odd message display.

ERROR
143.

Kang quickly thumbed to the back of the manual and ran his right index finger down the two-page list of error codes until he found the number 143. Out to the right the noun nomenclature read
SYMBOLIC INPUT POWER—UNCONDITIONAL ABORT
.

Oh my!

Again, Kang froze in confusion, unsure what to do. He instinctively looked back toward the window, then through the kitchen to the door in the distance as he thought it over. He looked up at the old wall clock, positioned just below the Workers’ Party–distributed portraits of the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, and the Dear Leader, Kim Il Sung. He had to get moving, had to get the message off.

Power! That’s it. It must be.

Kang reached for the RTTY, rotating it 180 degrees to see the rear connections. He touched both terminals, feeling for slack in the connections. Nothing.

Kang pushed himself to his feet and moved back to the window, pausing to quickly look outside at the makeshift antenna, ensuring the radial poles buried just below the dirt hadn’t been disturbed. It was the same garden spot where his mother buried the kimchi bowls in the winter so they would stay cold but not frozen.

Things looked in order.

Kang followed the thirty-foot antenna made from metal fence pieces and barbed wire from the ground to its apex, finding nothing odd or disturbed. Satisfied, he returned to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside, gingerly slipping back into his loafers. Forgetting to close the door, Kang stepped off the low porch and walked around the drab wall of the aged and gray house, hugging the side and trying to conceal his movements using the sporadic bushes off to the side.

Kang reached the power pole just six or seven feet from the wall, and followed the white power cable from the hole under the tiled roof across the open space and down the pole until it reached the breaker box. Kang looked closely; nothing out of order to the naked eye. He looked around the immediate area, searching for a stick to protect him from the hot line. Finding one that might do, an old soiled garden hoe, he delicately touched the ends of the wire, immediately realizing one of the wires was obviously loose.

No time to fix this!

Kang again found the end of the power cable, gently jamming the wooden side of the garden tool up and into the old wooden box, attempting to connect the cables enough to provide enough power to operate the RTTY. He let go of the stick cautiously, ensuring it held, before returning to the RTTY and the open space in the ondol flooring.

Back kneeling on the dingy pillow, Kang wheeled the brown metal RTTY back around to face the screen and keyboard. Waiting for him was the message he had prayed for.

OUTPUT1

Attacking the olive drab keys with eight fat fingers, Kang banged out the required character string
RYRYRYRY
needed to test five-level teleprinters. Known as Baudot, this stressful test sequence for electromechanical teleprinters forces the switching between the two characters. Repeated over and over, it outputs a carrier wave that regularly and rapidly shifts back and forth in frequency, allowing for testing of signal polarity.

The test took only a few seconds and Kang found the keys again to craft his message, not forgetting to properly front it with BOM,
beginning of message
, generating green 5-bit characters every time he pressed a key.

BOM. MTNG 38
th
NEXT—

Kang stopped typing at the sound of the knock at the door. Someone must have seen him outside, either before he hid the bicycle inside, or maybe when he checked the power cable connection. Kang knew he didn’t have time to put the RTTY away and make the last train out before the electricity shut off. No, it would take too long to even politely dismiss any of his neighbors bringing fresh radish and turnip kimchi to simply mask their nosiness. And if his visitors were government men, or a few of the four million Worker-Peasant Red Guard paramilitaries, he would need much more time to properly sterilize the ondol flooring and return it to its natural state.

Ignore it, keep typing, send the message. It’s your last chance!

Kang continued hacking, finishing the message, his nerves forcing him to backspace twice to correct, just as a second and distinctly louder and longer knock was heard at the door.

MTNG 38
th
NEXT WED. SOS. SEEGHAR. EOM.

Kang hit Enter twice, initiating the Send sequence.

Damn it! The noise!

Kang had forgotten about the noise the RTTY makes as it begins to transmit, and reached for the tubular silver volume slide. He slid it down, from level five to zero.

A third knock.

Kang yanked the pillow from under his knees and placed it over the face of the RTTY. Chancing a power failure again, he lifted the teleprinter up and gently placed it back into its hiding place. Looking one last time at the front door, he shoved the flat stone back into place and refastened the golden lacquer paper.

“Yes, I’m coming, please wait.”

*   *   *

Kolt, struggling to keep his forefinger following the correct road on his map, didn’t realize they had arrived at the safe house until Olga brought the truck to a shuddering halt. They’d commandeered the vehicle the three Spetsnaz troops had been using, an Ural-315 general utility truck, to replace their destroyed truck. Kolt motioned for Olga to kill the lights.