Vital Force (25 page)

“We're tourists,” Jake said.

“Yes,” Bailey said. “They know that now.”

The Korean officer, not saying a word, simply bowed his head in shame.

“Well. Thank you, Mr. Barney.”

“Bailey.”

“Sorry,” Jake said.

Bailey opened a folder and handed back their wallets, which the two of them accepted.

Without saying another word, Bailey escorted the two of them out the building into his car in the visitor's lot. They drove through the center of Seoul, the darkness of dusk and the headlights of cars swerving in and out of traffic a confusing blend of chaos.

Jake said, “What the hell was that all about?”

Bailey shook his head. “Bullshit. They were pissed that we had not turned over the woman to them. They had some shit on you, Jake, but they wouldn't tell me what.”

“But why pick up me?” Fisher asked.

“We're not sure. Guilty by association, I guess.”

“Where'd the woman go?” Jake asked him.

Bailey hesitated as he honked the horn and weaved around a small bus. Finally, he said, “Korean Air flight to Vladivostok.”

“Russia?” Fisher asked.

Bailey nodded.

Jake contemplated that. Russia. He wasn't sure what he was thinking, but he knew that things were becoming clearer now. “Do you have her by satellite?”

“Clear as day,” Bailey said. “We're sure she has no idea you slid a tracking device into her leather jacket. From what the guys said, that was one smooth exchange, Jake.”

“Do we follow her to Russia?” Fisher asked.

Bailey glanced at one then the other. “Not officially.”

“What about the other signal?” Jake asked Bailey.

Fisher was confused. “What other signal?”

“Before you got here,” Jake said. “We put a tracker on Chang Su. My contact in China. She helped me get the photos. She had broken her arm. So, we weaved a satellite tracker into her cast.”

“I don't understand,” Fisher said.

“Su took off,” Bailey explained. “She has been a double agent in the past, so we weren't sure we could trust her completely.”

“That's not true,” Jake said. “You weren't sure.”

“Turns out I was right.”

“She left. We don't know she's working both sides.”

Bailey sighed as he entered the southbound freeway toward Osan.

“What?” Jake said.

“She got on the same plane to Vladivostok.”

“Shit. Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Our guys watched her. She stayed back a ways, watching the other woman. Then, when the woman got on the plane, Su followed her.”

Fisher broke in. “Sounds like she was surveilling her.”

“Right,” Jake agreed. “When'd she buy her ticket?”

“Why does that matter?” Bailey said.

“Matters a whole helluva lot.”

“At the counter, just before she got on,” Bailey said. “Traded in a ticket to Shanghai.”

Fisher had a look of incertitude on his face. “Why buy a ticket to Shanghai?”

“Two reasons,” Jake said. “First, she needed a ticket to get past security into the international terminal.” This second part Jake was only guessing on, but he was fairly sure he was correct.

“And second?”

“Second. . . she thought the woman would go to Shanghai. She was just as confused as us.”

“That sounds hard to believe,” Fisher said.

“That she knew where the woman was going?”

“No. That she was as confused as me. Why Russia?”

“I had seen the woman before,” Jake said.

“Li?” Fisher said. “The woman I had been following all across the west coast?”

“Yeah. And she recognized me. When I asked her if she was Kim, there was no way for her to hide her recognition of me. She was truly shocked.”

“Where did you know her from?”

Jake thought about that. He was close to eighty percent certain, even though it had been dark when he had pulled the mask from her head before his run through the snow.

“Russia,” Jake finally said. “Her and a friend took me for a ride and got me into this whole mess.”

They drove on through the darkness toward Osan.

They had gotten back to Osan Air Base by five in the evening, Jake and Fisher both a bit tired and confused, and Lieutenant Colonel Stan Bailey with another surprise for them.

First, Bailey had brought them to an electronic surveillance facility, with dozens of language experts from the Air Force and Army in front of computer terminals, headsets on, and listening to the North Koreans, Chinese and Russians.

The three of them settled next to a 40-inch plasma screen with a map of the entire region displayed. There were blips all over the place, Jake noticed. Each contact was coded and could be called up with a mouse click. The colonel moved a staff sergeant away and took a seat in his swivel chair, directing the mouse on two blinking dots, one red and one white.

“The red one is the woman you know as Li,” Bailey said. He clicked the mouse twice and a box opened in the upper right quadrant of the screen. Inside the box was a photo of the Asian woman, along with a description of her background.

“You know that much about Li?” Fisher asked.

Bailey looked up at a confused Agency officer. “Yes.”

“What about the white contact?” Jake asked.

Bailey moved the mouse to the white blip and clicked twice. Another box opened with Chang Su's information, along with a photo that must have been a few years old. The information stayed on the screen for only a few seconds, because Bailey clicked both off and maneuvered the mouse back up to the region with the two contacts.

“Now here's the problem,” Bailey said. “The two of them left Vladivostok, and are heading toward Khabarovsk Province in the Russian Far East. Jake is familiar with this area.”

Jake thought about that, and it seemed like months ago. Yet, it had been less than a week since he had been in Russia for the missile launch.

Bailey highlighted a square section surrounding the two contacts and then enlarged that area. “Judging from the speed, and local sources on the ground, they're both on the Trans-Siberian Railway about two hours out of Vladivostok, with another ten hours to Khabarovsk. That train is scheduled to arrive there by midnight.”

“Why not just fly there?” Fisher asked.

Jake leaned in and pointed to a spot along the route. “The rail line follows the Ussuri River. Cross the river and that's the Manchurian frontier. We sure Li isn't heading there to make the drop?”

Bailey shrugged. “We aren't sure of much.”

“No, no,” Fisher said. “That woman is a control freak. She'll place the DVD in the buyer's hand herself.”

“That's why we need the both of you to head them off,” Bailey said, emphatically.

“How the hell can we catch up with them?” Fisher asked.

Bailey smiled. “Follow me.”

The three of them left the building, piled into Bailey's Humvee, and then crossed the base toward the hangars. He parked outside the same hangar where they had parked the B-2 earlier in the day. Two security policemen guarded a secure door off to the side of the main hangar doors, and Bailey parted them with Jake and Fisher at his tail.

The inside of the hangar was now in subdued red lights. The B-2 sat in the center as technicians scurried about, preparing the aircraft for flight.

Bailey stopped next to a service lift used to load bombs into the internal bay of the B-2 and other aircraft. Sitting on the lift was two black cylinders that resembled sleek coffins. An air force technical sergeant opened one of the rounded containers for them to view. Inside, there was padding, but instead of the white satin of a coffin, this interior was entirely black. There were tubes and a mask at one end of the structure. Both ends were rounded.

Fisher's mouth seemed to hang open.

The pilot who had flown Fisher across the Pacific came out from a back room, fully dressed in flight gear, and stopped alongside the coffin. “You boys ready?” the pilot asked.

“Ready for what?” Fisher said, confused.

“Where's the oxygen connection?” Jake asked the pilot.

The pilot leaned over and pointed to a receptacle near the head of the container.

“And you've done this before?” Jake asked.

Bailey took the question. “That's classified. Let's just say it's been thoroughly tested.”

“Whoooh. . .” Fisher said, his hands up in protest. “You mean to tell me you put people in here?” He glanced over his shoulder at the B-2 and then back to the other men. “Then drop the bastards like bombs?”

The pilot smiled.

Bailey said, “That's the idea.”

“No fuckin' way,” Fisher yelled. “Flyin' across the ocean on a Goddamn air mattress is one thing, but this—”

Jake checked over the inside of the container more carefully. “Let me guess. Altimeter chute release.” Then he moved down to the end of the container, where he suspected the feet would go. “What you use to cushion the fall.”

“You got a smart one here, Stan,” the pilot said. “It's basically a collapsing spring. You hit the ground and this outer case pretty much disintegrates around you. It's made from a tempered Plexiglas.”

“So all that's left is the chute, a few pieces of cloth, and a couple of fittings,” Jake said.

“Exactly,” Bailey said.

Fisher swished his head from side to side. “No fuckin' way. What if the chute doesn't go?”

“Then you'll never know what hit ya,” the pilot said.

Now Jake was a bit confused.

“What's wrong, Jake?” Bailey asked him.

“How do you control this to the drop zone?”

“Satellite guidance,” the pilot said, pointing to slits along the upper end of the black container. “Control fins pop out of here after it drops; GPS satellite controlled. Once it reaches the set altitude, the drogue chute deploys to slow you down, followed closely by the main chute, and then you're in a free fall.”

“And trees?” Jake said.

“It could be a rocky fall. But there's an inside release if you get tangled. You pop this, take a look, and then release the chute. You're cushioned for a drop of at least thirty feet without the chute. Shouldn't happen, though. We'll aim for a nice opening. Low winds. You should be fine.”

Jake put his hand on the colonel's shoulder. “The Agency better have a nice chunk of money waiting for me in my account.”

“Already been taken care of, Jake.”

“You in, Fisher?” Jake asked him.

“Like I have a choice? Sure the Agency will say it's entirely up to me. Then I say hell no and I end up in Duluth. Fuck that. How far is it to Russia?”

“About a thousand miles by air to your drop point,” the pilot said.

“Why not just fly commercial?” Fisher asked. “A little beer and peanuts. Lousy food.”

“No can do,” Bailey said. “First, the schedule wouldn't get you there until morning. By then the Asian woman could have made the drop and boarded a plane to damn near anywhere. As you know, she killed a bunch of folks back in the States. And second, we don't want anyone knowing you're on your way. Somehow they found out you were at the Seoul airport. You could be tracked all the way into Russia.”

“And we can't fly a military plane in without filing a flight plan and getting major clearance,” Jake said.

“Exactly.”

“But with the stealth bomber,” Fisher said. “Nobody sees us coming.”

“Right,” the pilot said. “We slip in, drop you two off, literally, and continue on to Alaska. Hell, we don't even need fly over rights.”

Jake looked at the containers one more time. “These must cost a good chunk of money for a one-use system.”

“They're a bargain,” Bailey said. “We can drop a SEAL team into any location, they take out a target or capture someone, and then we set up extraction. It's what we need more of in these times. Human intelligence. Folks on the ground. Even our smartest bombs can't compare to that.”

Jake had to admit that was a helluva deal. Yet, he wasn't sure he wanted to be a Guinea pig. Regardless of his old friend's recitation of the familiar classified argument, Jake had a feeling they would be the first to use these flying coffins. Chimps notwithstanding.

Feeling like a man in his own grave, Jake shifted his body sideways to keep from cramping. The idea of enclosing him in that human bomb, at first, had seemed quite absurd. Put into practice, the idea became almost laughable, and he wondered how in the hell they would lock someone into these contraptions for longer than the two-hour flight they were on before being dropped from twenty thousand feet?

The air force technicians had locked them into the pods, lifted them into the internal bomb bay of the B-2, connected the oxygen and heating tube, and then towed the aircraft outside. He remembered the strange sound and rumbling as the jet engines turned over; he felt the slight bounce of the craft moving down the taxiway; he experienced the surge of power as the B-2 lifted off; and then there was the almost tranquil sensation of cruising flight.

He felt that now. Like he was floating.

In the briefing before their departure, Bailey had equipped them both with cold weather clothing, helmets with communications, goggles, and, most importantly, his favorite handgun, the Czech CZ-75 in 9mm, with three extra clips. He moved his left arm against the gun now, strapped between his biceps and ribs. Bailey had also returned Fisher's 9mm Beretta to him.

Jake had no idea what was in store for the two of them. They had gotten briefings and words of encouragement from the pilots for the past couple of hours, but they had been silent for the past fifteen minutes. He guessed they had to be getting close to their drop zone.

He wondered how Fisher was doing one rotation up on the rotary bomb rack. Jake had explained that he would be the first to go, but the Agency man had not been comforted much by that fact. He had gone screaming and kicking into the darkness of the pod.