One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel (29 page)
“That went smooth,” Slapshot said as he shut the door.
“Let’s hope it all goes that smooth.” Kolt put the Kia in gear and drove south up the hill, passing the trucks on the left. They passed where the dining facility used to stand and the ramshackle Bravo Company barracks on the right, then the forgotten Burger Bar and barbershop on the left.
The trucks followed Kolt’s Kia as it made the left at the T intersection, still climbing another two hundred feet to the Y intersection. In sequence, the two trucks backed up the hill leading to the large one-story building, leaving them combat parked directly in front of the North of the River Inn, better known to former Currahee officers, men like Kolt Raynor, as simply the Notri.
With only the scuff of boots and a cough, men exited the trucks and walked into the Notri, their way forward facilitated by Slapshot and the bolt cutters. Kolt followed, looking around to see if anything was amiss, but everything seemed as it should. He was still thinking about Hawk, but he was able to compartmentalize that concern so he could focus on the here and now. She’d had her soft moment, and he was pretty certain she’d overcome it. Time would tell soon enough.
Kolt stepped inside and found his way to the large, curtainless windows. The only light came from the moon and its reflection off the Imjin River and a few red-lens flashlights.
“We have one mission here, men.” Kolt looked around at the assembled group of Noble Squadron and 160th Little Bird pilots. “We are to provide immediate QRF for Red Squadron,” he said, reiterating what they all already knew from their extensive planning aboard the C17.
“We’ll keep the Smokey package bundled up until the meeting at Panmunjom ends. We definitely don’t need a curious local spotting us building up the MHs and compromising the entire mission.”
“No change to the enemy situation. Minimal armed troops on the target train, but unknown numbers still. A hundred on the trail train. No known Red Guard garrisons near Six’s ingress or egress route, just a few local rice farmers. Six will walk out with Seamstress.”
“Contingencies if Six is compromised or runs into trouble, boss?” Digger asked.
“If shit goes bad, our priority is SEALs first, then Seamstress,” Kolt said. “Obviously, if they need to evac a casualty or want to push the precious cargo out, we’re available.”
Digger’s question continued to hang in the air. Kolt knew he hadn’t answered it completely, and could feel the guys were not satisfied. He had already gotten the feeling that his men weren’t too fired up about the mission. Most felt the rushed timeline and the lack of info from the CIA was very close to goat rope threshold, definitely high risk to the mission and high risk to the force.
Kolt knew he needed to address the worst-case scenario, because one of them was about to ask it. Not simply to put his men at ease, but even more so to establish his creds with his new squadron. No doubt about it, some secretly blamed Kolt for Gangster’s demise. He expected all eyes to be laser focused on his every move.
“I know the plan is a little weak. Six has little wiggle room out there; they are definitely at min force as it is,” Kolt said, trying to make eye contact with all of them as he spoke. “We are definitely running the edge of minimal actionable intel here.”
Slapshot spoke up. “We’re good, boss, we know the risks.”
“Roger,” Kolt said, a little thankful Slapshot ran interference for him. “The last thing I’m looking to do is cross that border and execute an open-air takedown of a speeding armored train. Still, if it comes to that, there’s no one else I’d rather do it with than you.”
That was a little sunshine up their skirts, but Kolt meant it.
“Get your kit laid out for in extremis, two-man rule for radio watch, no white lights, and get some rack,” Slapshot said, judging that Kolt was finished.
Kolt watched the assaulters move quietly toward the old hardwood dance floor to organize their kit. They would be delicately handling the thirty-inch-long SIMON devices, repackaging the 150-grain polymer-bonded explosive rifle grenades for flight and quick use from the air. Kolt knew the tactical shotguns would be loaded with the 12-gauge ferret rounds, shotshells containing powdered CS gas that upon impact spit out a nasty chemical payload.
Kolt noticed Slapshot and JoJo, off in the corner, breaking the seal on the SpyLite micro-UAV. Slapshot turned and Kolt caught his eye.
“We good with this, boss?” Slapshot asked. His hesitation wasn’t lost on Kolt; they both knew that the entire ten million troops from the Korean People’s Army would have to crash the DMZ to even think about launching the platform.
“We humped it here,” Kolt said. “Let’s at least prep the wings and test the remote video terminal.”
“Roger,” Slapshot said before getting back at it.
Kolt took a quick nostalgic walk around the building. It had been a lifetime ago that he commanded an infantry rifle company during a yearlong hardship tour at this same camp. The television room, the long wooden bar still showing initials carved from decades of troops, the dining room, all missing the South Korean calligraphy and melted brass decorations that truly defined the place, brought back a wave of memories nonetheless.
Kolt walked toward the back glass door, slid it open, and stepped onto the back patio, the highest point in the forty-acre camp. It had seen better days—weeds and trees were threatening to engulf the place. He sucked in a chest full of fresh air coming off the Imjin, shaking slightly as he looked down at the water, then quickly lifted his eyes over the thousand-foot-wide river. From his vantage point, there were few visible lights in the distance; even the people of Munson-ri had turned in hours ago. This area hadn’t changed much over the years and he knew the hardworking and active South Koreans would be up before sunrise, walking the ridgelines and tending the rice paddies.
“Shit!” Kolt whispered to himself. “Get it together, Kolt.”
Looking at the Imjin brought other bodies of water to mind. His near-death dive in the spent fuel pool at Yellow Creek and recent dunking in the Atlantic Ocean swam into view and he did his best to push them away.
Kolt shook his head. Never before in his long career had the stakes been higher. Not necessarily the potential loss of life for hundreds of thousands of innocent American citizens, but something much more personal.
We mess this op up and it’s curtains for the Unit.
Sure, they needed to grab Seamstress. He was definitely the link to North Korea’s miniature nuclear warhead plans. But did America need Delta? Couldn’t this entire mission be handled just fine by SEAL Team Six? Riding the pods of a Little Bird certainly was not unique to Delta, a skill-level-one task for even any white special ops outfit. Hell, could we even handle this mission alone? What about the SEALs’ course of action? Subsurface infil from the Yellow Sea up the Yesong River, dodging underwater mines most of the way? The Unit get that done?
Kolt bounced it around for a moment. What’s the big equalizer? What exactly is it that we have on Six? How can we even argue POTUS’s point in these massive across-the-military budget-cut times? Does America really need more than one killer force?
Then it hit Kolt. The female pilot program and Cindy “Hawk” Bird. Someone who should have died at Yellow Creek after a month of captivity and two gunshot wounds at close range was now in a major op. Hawk was the real G.I. Jane, an operator capable of infiltrating situations no men ever could.
“You need to go down for a few, boss,” Slapshot said, walking up behind Kolt.
Kolt didn’t respond. He remained locked on the haunting river water several hundred feet below the balcony, unable to break its straitjacket-like hold on him.
“Boss!” Slapshot said, circling in front of Kolt. “You good, man?”
“Yeah, I’m about to rack,” Kolt said, blinking and coming back to himself.
“Place look the same to you?” Slapshot asked.
“Just about,” Kolt said. “I thought we’d hear the North Korean propaganda being broadcasted from loudspeakers inside Propaganda Village. Always had us sleeping with one eye open.”
“No shit?” Slapshot said.
“Urban legend is that nobody actually lived at Kijong-dong,” Kolt said. “Supposedly the lights and loudspeakers were controlled by a single switch somewhere in Kaesong.”
“Sounds legit to me.”
“Sure never anticipated using the Camp Greaves Officers’ Club as a safe house for the first covert U.S. military mission into North Korea in over sixty years.”
“I’d prefer to be on the other side of the border though,” Slapshot said. “However, my money says this entire Smokey and the Bandit effort will be just another rehearsal for a mission that will never happen.”
“I hear ya, Slap,” Kolt said. “Fingers crossed, though, we don’t have to buzz the border tomorrow morning.”
“You having second thoughts?” Slapshot asked. “Not letting Gangster bother you, are you?”
Kolt looked at Slapshot and raised his eyebrows in the dark.
“He’s stressed, but I’m with Hawk on this one. This has the potential to go loud real quick on so many levels.”
“The boys aren’t too fired up about the less-than-lethal shit, Kolt.”
“I’m not fired up about it either,” Kolt said, “but that’s the shit hand we’ve been dealt.”
“Guys are thinking that Six is just doing this to stick another one in our face,” Slap said, “another notch as POTUS’s go-to guys.”
“You?” Kolt asked, locking eyes with Slapshot.
“Boss, these guys know we’ve been together a long time, done a shit ton of crazy ops together.” Slapshot’s eyes bounced around Kolt’s head as if he was afraid to maintain eye contact. “But I’m with them on this one. This whole op is jacked up. We’re asking Hawk to hang it out without as much as a Boy Scout to lend her a hand. Six’s course of action is fucked up on so many levels I don’t know where to begin. Seems to me they are putting a lot of stock in stopping that train where they want it, and that the rubber bullets will work.”
“That pretty much the way all the boys inside see it?”
“Not all, I’m sure,” Slapshot said, “it just doesn’t pass the common sense test.”
“Brother, I won’t leave Hawk hanging,” Kolt said. “You know I won’t.”
“I know.”
“That we can influence, at least pull Hawk out if shit goes bad,” Kolt said, “but this QRF business is sketchy.”
“Good to hear you say that, Kolt,” Slapshot said, his shoulders dropping slightly in relief. “We’re not much of a match for armed and fanatical North Korean troops in an armored train.”
“Neither is Red Squadron if it goes bad.”
Panmunjom, 38th parallel
“The meeting has been moved to across the MDL,” Hawk said, just loud enough for her Bluetooth earpiece to pick up the tone, “I am in North Korea now.”
“What?” Gangster said. “Why the move? That wasn’t the plan.”
Hawk had cringed at the thought of having to call Gangster with the change in plans, knowing he’d want more details than she had time to share. Now she could practically hear his heart pounding, in concert with his nervous footsteps as he was surely pacing the Inchon hangar, color-coded sync matrix in one hand as he wildly waved the other to get everyone’s attention.
“It’s field trip city out here,” Hawk said in a hushed tone. “Every kindergartener in South Korea piled out of buses with a handful of helium balloons.”
“Okay, stay calm and tell me, where exactly are you? Have you positively identified Seamstress?”
“Yes, I think so. But they are all over me,” Hawk whispered as she tried to maintain a visual on the man she had pegged as Seamstress, walking up ahead. “Stand by.”
Hawk reached up with her right hand, letting her raspberry-painted fingernails flip her neck-length hair just enough to make sure the earpiece was naturally concealed as she trailed the Korean delegation members along a manicured street to an unknown building, now fifty or sixty yards away. Not only was that smart, as being fingered for suspicious behavior by any of the shifty-eyed North Korean soldiers, who had been eye-fucking her since they arrived, could blow her mission to tag Seamstress, but her response to Gangster’s irritating comment, from someone far removed from the X, would have been rated triple X for sure.
I am calm!
The eight males comprising the North Korean delegation, all dressed like off-the-rack penguins, perfect black-and-white everything, were confidently leading the way. The initial meeting spot inside the Military Armistice Commission building just wasn’t getting it for the other team. Not more than a minute after Hawk believed she had PIDed Seamstress from across the long rectangular table, the North Koreans delivered a small but firm protest, specifically charging that the atmosphere inside the building was too historically militaristic given its exact position straddling the military demarcation line, the decades-old term for the manmade line hugging the 38th parallel, more or less. The South Korean delegation, now mingling with the northerners for what seemed like a casual walk for everyone but Hawk, had barely registered a concern.
The South Korean party members were pretty much a mirror image of their northern neighbors, if not for the two short elderly women in the party, most likely proudly symbolizing the human rights thing, and two of the six male members risking century-old protocol with their progressive Spanish gray suits and charcoal ties.
Hawk certainly wasn’t as comfortable with the impromptu move, but of course, not her call. She knew the North Koreans were just flexing their muscles in front of her Swedish hosts, and as she followed from the rear of the pack she was surprised that the South Koreans seemed to be refreshingly comfortable around their enemies to the north. This looser atmosphere was one thing, not the most important thing. The impromptu relocation, a slight change to the tactical plan, prompted her to ring up Gangster at Inchon.
Hawk could hear the commotion going on back at Inchon, figuring Gangster and the staff were bracing for some bad news or anticipating changes to the sync matrix. Assuming she was not being observed directly, she spoke again, and winced a little from the new heels she was wearing. “Okay, I’m back.”