One Killer Force: A Delta Force Novel (30 page)

“Give me your distance and direction from your last known point,” Gangster demanded.

Crap! He wants my pace count? I knew we needed ISR to cover this meeting.
“Not sure. Uh, moving northwest, gone about two hundred yards. I see a very tall tower with a huge North Korean flag flying.”

“Where are you stopping?” Gangster said in an all-business tone.

“Looks like a light-orangish-colored building surrounded by trees, large steps out front center mass.”

“You must be going to the Panmungak building or the Tongilgak conference hall,” Gangster said.

“We just passed a three-story building with concrete steps on my right,” Hawk said, hoping she wasn’t interrupting the busy conversation she was hearing happening back at the hangar.

“Okay, confirmed. That is the Panmungak,” Gangster said. “If you see the flagpole in Kijong-dong, then you must be headed to the Tongilgak.”

Hawk really wasn’t looking for an urban planning lesson from Gangster, she just wanted to let the command know about the change. She knew the first phone call they expected from her, according to the plan, was the OPSKED “Toyota,” the code that the tag was on Seamstress, but a change is a change. Now she was wondering why she risked the call in the first place.

Hawk also knew Gangster wasn’t sold on the female operator program. In fact, that was a definite understatement, as Gangster was well known around the building as a voice of contention from the very moment the pilot program had been briefed to the operators nearly two years ago. No, if Hawk was looking for any emotional support, Gangster was the last guy to expect it from. The former Delta man, now JSOC’s man on the scene, only wanted to hear one thing from Hawk, or Cindy Bird, or even Carrie Tomlinson. The specific name didn’t matter to him; the results did. Anything short of her accomplishing her mission to tag Seamstress would spread through the Unit Spine faster than an operator having an accidental discharge inside the house of horrors.

“What do you need from us?” Gangster asked.

“Gotta go,” Hawk said. She reached into the jacket pocket just below her right breast, found the phone, felt for the power button, and mashed it to kill the call.

Hawk’s stomach tightened. After the short cell call with Gangster, she wouldn’t mind hearing his cartilage snapping, and other loud popping noises. Gangster had a mission to do and she appreciated his attention to detail and ability to synchronize complex operations, but a little personality goes a long way. He could save the mind fuck for sure. But, any energy wasted on policing Gangster, second-guessing herself, or worse, feeling sorry for herself, threatened her cover and risked compromise. She was the one dying to become a Delta operator and she knew damn well that if she pulled this off, the naysayers, those old-school graybeards back at Bragg, would have a hard time denying her.

Don’t worry about Gangster, worry about the North Koreans.

The Six guys, patiently postured in the hills sixteen klicks west of her, hunkered down within striking distance of the electrified standard-gauge P’yŏngbu Line, certainly depended on her. As the operations main effort, they had already set the remote-detonation explosive charges on the two bridges, Objectives Beaver and Bear, and were likely a little tense hoping to hear the signal that Seamstress had been successfully tagged. No Toyota call and no need to blow the bridges. No tag and the Six guys can call it an op and head back to the Yesong River. Hawk knew she was the key to success here. Fail to get close enough to place the RRD tag on Seamstress and they were mission abort for sure.

She looked around to see if anyone was watching her. Had she been seen talking to herself? She knew her actions may have drawn her additional scrutiny from watchful eyes, potentially creating obstacles to tagging Seamstress at best, and getting herself arrested for espionage at worst. The change in meeting location had bought her some time to think; it hadn’t provided anything that might help her accomplish her mission. Which meant she had to think smart about every step, every move. She had to conceive, analyze, decipher, and decide her next move in warp speed, before she made a mistake she couldn’t talk her way out of.

Hawk had never been exactly sure how she was going to successfully tag Seamstress anyway. Nobody else had any solid solutions either. Not the SEALs, not Myron Curtis, and not Kolt Raynor. Sure, all of them were type-A guys, had assholes and of course strong opinions, but none of them knew much more than Hawk about how things would go down at Panmunjom.

Hawk picked up her step to close with the Swedes, each step closer to the building creating more and more friction to blister her heels through her skin-tone-colored pantyhose. Trying to ignore the discomfort, she focused on reacquiring a bead on Seamstress. He was not an easy spot, dressed identically to the other North Koreans with the same jet-black hair and black suit over a white, collared shirt. Not a needle in a haystack, but if not for the slimmer build, it would have been easy to miss him.

Flanked by North Korean soldiers stair-stacked every other step (likely the tallest the military could produce, since they towered over the shorter delegation), and a half-dozen North Korean reporters with red armbands and Hangul markings on their left arms, the congregation climbed the smooth gray marble stairs to the front entrance. Hawk noticed their sloppy-fitting dress uniform jackets, in some odd shade that fell somewhere between olive drab green and worm dirt on the color chart, over pants of the same color, and black shoes. Polished dark leather gun belts were wrapped around their waists, appearing uncomfortably higher than their belly buttons, a holster on one side which, given the distinct hammer, Hawk figured to be holding a Czech model. Two leather magazine pouches on the off-hand side, set perfectly for rapid reloads should they run the pistol dry. Their heads were topped with bus driver–looking saucer hats with shiny black leather bills that made them appear to be ten feet tall. Postures perfect, at rigid attention, their eyes not shielded by dark sunglasses like their cousin guards to the south. No, the North Korean guards were not hiding the fact that they were there to make sure the South Koreans didn’t pull anything funny that might embarrass the proud Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The menacing eyes were intimidating to guests of the hermit kingdom, the more the better.

Climbing the stairs, Hawk kept an eye on Seamstress as she tried not to turn an ankle in her heels. Besides causing her to lose major cool points, a tumble on the concrete would most likely strew the contents of her purse all over the place, sending the RRDs and quantum dots rolling down the stairs back toward South Korea. At least she wasn’t carrying a handgun or a grenade, something that the North Korean troops would go ape shit about. The tall North Korean guards had been gawking at her since the Swedish delegation arrived, but in a different way than the SEALs had. What Hawk had smuggled across the MDL was not a deadly weapon, unless they were swallowed, maybe. However, given Hawk’s mission, they were more important than a crate full of mortar rounds or a payload-heavy Stealth bomber.

As Seamstress entered the dark wooden door, Hawk lost sight of her target. She maneuvered toward the same door, rudely stepping around one of the South Korean dwarf-looking females, and entered the building. The delegation had been met by a welcoming party of a half dozen or so North Korean officials, likely caretakers of the buildings and grounds. With the others, Hawk shook hands with the hosts and gave the customary bow, smiling at each of them, struggling to not allow her eyes to bounce around the large foyer to search for Seamstress.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a man separate himself from the crowd, make a turn around a corner, and vanish. Hawk couldn’t be sure who had left, and quickly scanned the crowd like a counter sniper’s spotter picking out a hostile in a crowded alley full of noncombatants. Hawk saw the two women and the two gray-suited South Koreans. Then she counted the penguins as nonchalantly as possible, conscious of moving her lips as she mouthed each number. Nine in all; one was missing.

Before she could make a decision, Hawk was interrupted by a female servant looking every bit the part of an expensive porcelain geisha doll, offering small hockey puck–shaped chocolate and lime green sweets and gold-crowned cups half full of hot tea. Simply following the lead of the others, Hawk helped herself to one of each.

Hawk drilled down, stepped through the crowd, trying to gain a position of advantage to see the faces of each Korean man dressed in a black suit. If not the face, at least enough to recognize Seamstress’s distinct narrow build compared to the others.

No luck.

Was that Seamstress that moved away from the group? By now Hawk knew it must have been. She was certain she had covered the entire foyer, made a complete sweep, stolen a glimpse of every man there, and confirmed her target had left.

Shit!

Hawk ran the options quickly. She knew he wasn’t trying to escape; maybe slip out a back door to make a mad dash for the MDL and the safety of South Korean soil. No, that would be suicide, even Seamstress knew that much. If that happened, the Czech CZ-82 pistols would be drawn and bullets would be flying, at least one of them having Seamstress’s name on it. Besides, if he wanted to kill himself, he didn’t need to take a long, impossibly slow ride on a bumpy train all the way from Pyongyang first.

The men’s room! Gotta be it.

Hawk allowed herself to settle back down a bit, realizing she was over-amped. Seamstress hitting the head was natural; hell, the guy was pushing seventy. Trying to tag Seamstress in the men’s room wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but definitely a high-risk idea.

As Hawk turned her attention back to the mingling crowd she noticed a female North Korean soldier enter the same door she had used. She was dressed similar to the men, but wore a fat olive beret with a gold emblem affixed to the front center. Like a Little League ballplayer, she wore her headgear slipped back high on her head, affixing her straight black bangs perfectly flat to her forehead. Definitely not a looker, but she was just as armed and dangerous as the others. The soldier held up a brass bell and shook it rapidly, no different than a daycare teacher summoning the kids in from recess.

“Please, attention please,” she said, “before have our discussions, we must secure hand-carried items and pocketbooks. Forbidden items are no allowed the Kim Il Sung Memorial Conference Room.”

Hawk froze. The lady trooper’s English was a little off, but Hawk knew exactly what she was saying.

Hawk tensed, shook violently inside, awakening a lot of haunted memories from the deepest recesses of her consciousness. Images of being inside the interrogation box at Black Ice, being beaten by Nadal the Romanian for days on end in that seedy hotel, and feeling her designer heel penetrate the terrorist’s brain stem just before she ate two 9 mm slugs were now front and center. In those instances, like now, Hawk was unable to do a damn thing about it. If she had a pair of balls, they certainly had her by them now.

Forbidden items, yes, that’s what she said.

Hawk knew she was facing mission failure, and she hadn’t even so much as given a friendly greeting to Seamstress. Forget about tagging him now. No purse meant no RRD tags, no quantum dots. Sure, she might be able to hold on to her cell and Bluetooth, but for what benefit? Nobody wanted to hear from her again until she had done her job. Not until she had tagged that old man and sent him on his way back to the train at Panmun Station and the waiting SEALs.

Mission failure at Panmunjom was looking more and more possible. But what about her own status within the Unit? What would failure here look like to the men back at Bragg? She could go back to the training cell if she called in a favor. Maybe Kolt could help, or even Colonel Webber might take pity on her. The NBC shop could use her too. Or, she could get those PCS orders to Fort Riley back. Yes, pack her shit, kiss her Special Forces boyfriend Troy good-bye, and top off the Volkswagen Beetle to begin the long drive.

Hawk had plenty of options if she wanted to fail, but only one option if she wanted to be knighted as a full-fledged Delta operator. An operator on par with the male operators in the Unit. Someone given equal pay and equal responsibility, someone held to the same standards and expectations. If Hawk wanted to make history within the special operations community, be the first female operator, she needed to make some Unit history in North Korea first.

“Miss Tomlinson, I’m sorry, can I have your purse, please?”

Hawk flinched as she looked dead in the eye of one of the dwarfs. She was kind enough all right, just doing her job, and as she reached for Hawk’s pocketbook Hawk shuffled back in her heels, bumping into the snack table and knocking over one of the half-full teacups. Hawk quickly set her own cup and chocolate on the white tablecloth before clutching her lifeline tight to her chest. Lose control of the RRD tags and Q dots and she might as well Bluetooth the SEALs direct to tell them to bug out.

Hawk had to do something and she was out of time.

“Yes, ma’am, but in a minute,” Hawk said, as she winked at the South Korean lady. “It’s, uh, that time of the month and I really need to freshen up first, you understand.”

Spinning ninety degrees on the balls of her feet, Hawk didn’t wait for a response, and headed for the corner where she’d last seen Seamstress. She nodded politely to a second geisha, and without making a big deal about it, continued on for the hallway. Hawk hoped nobody noticed, at least not enough to question her, and if the bathrooms were just ahead, she had the perfect cover for action.

Hawk walked quickly down the solid white hallway, strangely sans any pictures or other decorations, save for the large and ubiquitous gaudy framed paintings of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Her heels sounded off with each step on the polished tile floor as if they were sending a coded warning to Seamstress or a beacon to the North Korean soldiers.

Up ahead, she saw two hardwood doors, each with several Hangul letters that she couldn’t understand. Hawk hurried to the doors, hoping they were the men’s and women’s rooms, and before she had to guess which one to enter, the left door swung open.