Choi grimaced in terror, his face tight with fear. He pleaded with Forester. “No! Please no!”
“Tell us where the others went!” said Forester
“No, I can’t! They will kill me!”
Forester pointed to Marcus and shouted, his voice full of exasperation. “That man will burn your balls off if you don’t talk now!”
At that, Marcus pushed Forester aside and moved in, jutting the poker into the chair inches from Choi’s crotch. Blue swirls of acrid smoke curled up from the wooden surface, drifting into Choi’s nose and eyes. An audible sizzle scratched the air.
“Tell me!” Marcus shouted in Korean. “Speak now!” He grabbed Choi by the hair of his head, raised the poker, and slammed it back into seat of the chair close enough that the North Korean could feel the heat on his private parts.
Choi let out a scream and shouted, “A house on Farmer’s Loop road! We were to meet at a house on Farmer’s Loop road!”
The door to the cabin burst open. Wyatt, Edwards, and Tomer walked in.
Chapter 27
Marcus stood above the bound man in front of the fire. The red-hot iron still sizzled between Choi’s legs.
“What the hell is going on here?” Tomer shouted. “Jesus H. Christ! Are you torturing that man?”
The men turned to see who was speaking.
Choi was muttering in Korean. Forester knelt next to him, listening closely and writing the details on a notepad.
Marcus returned the poker to its rack. He stepped across the room toward the new people. He looked at Lonnie and said, “Who is he?”
Tomer pushed himself forward and confronted Marcus, hands on his hips. “Anthony Tomer, Special Agent, FBI. And if you have been torturing that man for information, I will have you…”
“Shut up,” Marcus interrupted.
The FBI agent was stunned by the blunt command. He glanced around the room into the stares of the cold-eyed men that surrounded him.
Forester stood up. “He said it is somewhere on Farmer’s Loop Road, north of town, but he doesn’t know where exactly.”
“Why wouldn’t he know?” Wasner asked.
“He just keeps saying Farmer’s Loop, and that they will kill him.”
“Does he know any more?”
“Probably, but it might take a while to get it out of him.”
Lonnie stepped forward. “You speak Korean?” she asked Forester.
“Yes, ma’am, do you?”
“Natively. Maybe I can get more out of him,” she said. “Let’s switch up.”
“Go for it.”
“Back him away from that fire first. Loosen the ropes on his chest a little.”
The men moved Choi away from the fire to a far corner of the room where Lonnie could speak to him in some privacy. She knelt down, made eye contact with him, and spoke softly.
“Sir. What is your name?”
“Choi Ki Pyun,” he said between tearful sobs.
“Are you a soldier?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I, too, am Korean. You can call me Nuna,” she said, referring to the respectful yet affectionate title given to a man’s older sister, or to a woman who is a few years older but on personal terms with the man.
He raised his eyes to look at her. She gave him a kind and gentle smile. After the trauma of the giant warrior’s methods, her soft familiar face and tender Korean voice broke him down completely. Sergeant Choi spilled his guts.
Chapter 28
Franklin Eckert sat at the workbench in the computer lab. The facility in Fairbanks was primarily used for evidence storage until items were needed down at the state crime Lab in Anchorage. As small as it was, it did offer some diagnostic and testing equipment for minor jobs that needed to be done quickly.
Two metal boxes lay on the stainless steel work surface. Eckert studied them. Each one was just over one foot square and about two inches thick. The boxes had an electronic keypad, like one that would be used on a digital door lock, just to the left of center. A round indentation next to the keypad contained a metallic handle, folded over to one side and held down with a spring so it was flush with the surface.
Eckert picked up one of the boxes and inspected it on all sides. There were no markings or writing of any kind on the outside of the box. The top and sides were one piece of stamped metal, forming a box. Four pan head screws, set flush with the surface, fixed the bottom plate on.
“You sure these things have no explosives in them?” he asked officers Straub and Kelley of the state Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team, EOD.
“Well, if they do, it’s something newer than the latest detection technology,” replied Straub. He motioned to a device that looked very similar to a hand-held vacuum cleaner. “These are brand-new bomb sniffers, and they found nothing. Our x-ray only showed a bunch of circuits and chips in there.”
Franklin wiped the sweat from his forehead, some of which dripped onto the table in front of him. He turned the box upside down, picked up a screwdriver, and removed the screws that held the bottom of the case on.
Once he had all four out, the bottom of the box easily slid apart from the rest of the unit and Franklin stared at what lay before him. The contents consisted of a generic computer board, with several dozen EPROM chips, a handful of capacitors and resistors soldered into it. Wires ran from the board to the keypad and the handle. There were words on the board and the chips, both English and Chinese. The parts were generic and easily obtainable computer components that could have been acquired at any electronics store.
The bottom section of the box felt heavy for the amount of metal. Franklin held it up and looked at the space between the circuit board and the steel plate of the case. In the centimeter-thick space lay what appeared to be a wide, flat magnet.
Franklin set it back down and traced which wires went to what components. He ran his finger along the embedded circuits on the board, mumbling to himself as he studied the device. He set all of the parts down on the table, sat back and stared at it.
“Well?” asked Officer Straub. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve seen stuff kinda like it before, but not exactly. This is interesting.”
Officer Kelley asked, “Can you figure it out, or should we send it down to Anchorage?”
Franklin scratched his head. During six years in the Navy, he had laid his hands on some of the world’s most sophisticated, high-tech electronic warfare equipment. He knew more about computer circuitry and how to use electricity as a weapon than almost any other man in the country, maybe even the world. He stared contemplatively at the contraption then almost jumped out of the chair. Eyes wide, he stood up and studied the metal box again. Noting the layout of the wires from the panel to the keypad, he turned to the other box, opened it, and looked at the wires in it. Franklin put the lids back on both boxes and picked one up. He walked across the room to an electrical outlet.
“Straub,” he called. “Come here and hold this box right over that outlet.”
Straub did so. Franklin pulled up the spring-loaded handle and twisted it as far as it would go, about half- way around the raised circle. A soft hum floated from inside the box. He pressed six number keys on the pad and walked to the table, where he picked up the other box and took it to an outlet on the other side of the room.
“Kelley, go over to the door and tell me if you see anything happen out in the hallway in a second.”
Franklin then twisted the round handle on that one and pressed six numbers. As he released the last of the numbers, the lights went off in the room.