Boatswain's Mate First Han heard the approaching Korean soldier an instant before he saw him, a confident swish-click of boots on the pavement a few yards away. He did not unsling his AK-47. A burst from the unsilenced weapon would awaken the entire compound. Instead, his right hand fished for the Mark 22 hush puppy he'd tucked into his web belt at the small of his back.
He faced the newcomer. "Kogi nugu'se yo?" he said, his tone challenging. "Who's there?" If there was a password or countersign he was dead, but if he could take the initiative before the other man's suspicions were aroused…
The Korean was close enough now that Han could see his features in the dim illumination from a light outside the darkened camp. He was a typical-looking soldier, with a sergeant's rank tabs and an AK slung muzzle-down, a pail in one hand. Han caught the sour tang of kimchi… dinner for the squad on duty.
The soldier glanced about once, then looked hard at Han, his eyes hardening with sudden suspicion. "Nuku'simnikka?" the North Korean snapped. "Who are you? Where are the others?"
Han knew at once that his carefully prepared story would not convince this man. The KorCom soldier's free hand was already going for the pistol grip of his AK-47, snapping the selector switch to full auto, dragging the muzzle up in a one-handed attempt to shoot Han before the SEAL could react.
But Han already had his hush puppy out, whipping the pistol around and squeezing the trigger. The heavy-barreled weapon thumped once… twice. The Korean stumbled, his feet tangling with the bucket of kimchi as he fell.
The blaze of autofire stabbing into the sky from the soldier's AK-47 shattered the camp's silence. Across the compound, lights were coming on…
"Saram sallyo yo!" the wounded guard screamed. He'd emptied half his magazine into the sky. "Help! Intruders!" He struggled to aim the AK at the SEAL.
Han fired again and again until the screams were silenced, but it was already too late. He could make out running figures farther down the street, and more and more lights were coming on, bathing the area in pools of harsh brilliance.
He dropped the hush puppy and unslung his stolen AK. Gunfire barked from a building across the street, and a bullet sang off the chain-link fence at his back. Close by, men ran past the truck parked at the side of the road, racing in his direction.
"Korean!" a voice shrilled. "Halt at once!"
Han spun. Gunfire crashed once more from the shadows beside the truck. Rounds slammed into the SEAL's chest and side, hammering him to the ground.
For a dizzying, pain-clouded eternity, there was silence. Han lay facedown on the ground, gasping for each breath against the hot blood he felt welling up in his throat. He tried reaching for the AK he'd dropped.
Then rough hands knocked the AK aside and rolled him over. Someone kicked him in the side, then probed his clothing for hidden weapons as rifle muzzles pressed against his head. A face, a Korean face, grinned down at him from inches away. "So!" the man said. "South Korean Special Forces, I presume?" The face puckered, then spat.
The Koreans thought he was a ROK commando. Somehow, the irony seemed impossibly funny. Laughter turned to agony, though, as his breath rattled in his chest. Han knew he was drowning in his own blood.
"Palli!" the KorCom officer snapped. "Quickly! Get the prisoners!"
Then the darkness closed in and BM/1 Charlie Han died.
CHAPTER 24
HM/1 Bailey's whisper was harsh. "They're coming!"
They'd heard the disturbance outside half an hour earlier, sounds like silenced gunfire, sharp yells, the hammer of bullets striking metal, the crash of broken glass. Then, the sound of a truck being driven off, followed by a silence so complete it might never have been broken. Sailors at the windows could see nothing. The entire camp was blacked out. Searchlights swept the clouds in the distance, and the wail of sirens, the yap of barking dogs could be faintly heard.
Then, suddenly, the Americans had heard a Korean challenge, harsh voices… and then the ear-shattering yammer of an automatic weapon firing in the night. The firefight had lasted only seconds, but the silence was truly ended now by the slap of boots on pavement, shouted orders, and the sound of vehicles arriving outside.
Something's going down," Chief Bronkowicz added. "Sounds like someone's stirred 'em with a stick!"
"We can't let 'em take us," Zabelsky said. He clenched his fists, his eyes on the door as guttural voices sounded just beyond. "Those bastards are never gonna let us go… you guys know that, right?"
"Where's the gun?" Commander Wilkinson asked. In the back of the long room, one sailor climbed onto another's shoulders, searching by feel among the rafters for the hidden weapon.
Gunfire inside the camp could only mean that the SEALs had been discovered. Anything could happen now… including the wholesale massacre of the American prisoners.
"Bailey!" someone shouted. "Where are you, Doc?"
"Here!" The ship's senior hospital corpsman seemed an unlikely choice as gunman for the group. In wartime it would have been against the rules of the Geneva Convention for him to carry a weapon, though plenty of corpsmen had violated those rules in Nam two decades earlier. A quiet canvassing of all the men of Chimera's crew, however, had revealed that HM/1 Herb Bailey had been a member of the IPSC before he joined the Navy, had even qualified for the Bianchi Cup pistol shooters' match, though he'd never participated. He knew handguns and how to use them.
Perhaps most important, he wanted to do it and knew he could. A sailor passed Bailey the Mark 22 and its magazines. He took them without a word, snicked the magazine into the pistol grip, and dragged the slide back to chamber a round. The rattle of keys in the lock was already sounding through the room as he took his position to one side, ten feet from the door, the pistol concealed behind one of Chimera's men.
The door banged open and three Koreans burst into the room. They were angry and shouting, gesticulating with their AK-47s. None spoke English, but their demands were unmistakable. Hands up! Move out! Obey!
Bailey heard Gilmore's quiet voice just behind him. "Bailey? Let's do it, son."
Outside, he heard other soldiers shouting to one another. Killing these three would only delay the inevitable. But better for them all to go down fighting than the slow horror of watching shipmates being shot, one by one.
He shoved the sailor aside and raised the silenced pistol.
Sikes had heard the AK fire from across the compound and knew that the party had just begun in earnest. He exchanged a look with Larry Gordon, the first class torpedoman who had accompanied him to the area outside the North Korean barracks.
Earlier, during the air raid to the north of the camp, several hundred men had poured out of the three-story barracks and clambered into a system of trenches dug near the base perimeter, a crude but relatively effective air raid shelter. Once things grew quiet again, most of the KorCom troops had filed back into the barracks, though a large number had been reorganized into patrols and sentry bands. Sikes and Gordon had been busy since then, planting the claymore mines they'd carried in their packs.
Claymores were curved, rectangular boxes that were placed upright and set to detonate in any of a number of ways, from electric circuits to tripwires. Behind the neatly stenciled lettering which spelled FRONT TOWARD ENEMY, each claymore packed a pound and a half of C4 plastic explosive and seven hundred steel marbles. The device could be aimed, with the end effect a kind of gigantic shotgun. "Looks like it's time, Lieutenant," Gordon said.